The Roanoke Times is the primary newspaper in SouthwesternVirginia and is based inRoanoke, Virginia, United States. It is published by Lee Enterprises. In addition to its headquarters in Roanoke, it maintains a bureau inChristiansburg, covering the easternNew River Valley andVirginia Tech.
According to the 2011 Scarborough "Ranker Report,"The Roanoke Times ranks fifth in the country in terms of percentage of adults reading a newspaper on weekdays in that newspaper's coverage area.
TheRoanoke Daily Times began publication in 1886. The paper's original owner, M. H. Claytor, eventually added a companion evening newspaper,The Roanoke Evening News. In 1909, he sold the paper to a group headed by banker J. B. Fishburn. The Fishburn group bought theRoanoke Evening World in 1913, merging it with theEvening News and changing its name to theRoanoke World-News. At the same time, Times-World Corporation was formed as the owner of both papers.
By 1931, Times-World Corporation had expanded into broadcasting with the purchase of WDBJ (nowWFIR), Roanoke's first radio station. It eventually spawned an FM station (nowWSLC) and a television station (which still has theWDBJ calls). In 1969, Times-World merged withLandmark Communications, which sold off the broadcasting properties and kept the papers. In 1977, Landmark merged the two papers into a single all-day paper,The Roanoke Times & World-News.[2] TheWorld-News was dropped from the masthead in 1995.[3]
Landmark started shopping its newspaper properties in 2008 and sold theTimes toBerkshire Hathaway's BH Media Group in 2013.[4] This made theTimes a sister publication to theRichmond Times-Dispatch, as well as theNews & Advance ofLynchburg, the other major paper serving the Roanoke/Lynchburg media market.
As the major daily newspaper for Roanoke and much ofSouthwest Virginia,The Roanoke Times has extensively covered news events from the area that have gained national media exposure. Some examples include:
International Marketing & Engineering Inc., investigated byThe Roanoke Times, 1979, subsequently featured byHarry Reasoner in a CBS60 Minutes report on the company engaged in deceptive sales practices, whose officers were later sentenced to federal prison.The Roanoke Times was awarded the Virginia Press Association's W. S. Copeland Award for Journalistic Integrity and Community Service, its highest, for the investigation. The award was named after one of the prior owners of theRoanoke Times, Walter Scott Copeland, but was later retitled the "Virginia Press Association Award for Journalistic Integrity and Community Service" to distance itself from its namesake.[5]
The November 4, 1985,flood that caused extensive damage around Roanoke and left 10 people dead.
The September 22, 2000, shooting at the Backstreet Cafe in downtown Roanoke motivated by the assailant's hatred of the establishment's gay and lesbian clientele.
The February, 2008 resignation of Roanoke City councilman Alfred Dowe.[6] Dowe resigned afterThe Roanoke Times obtained documents showing that he billedtaxpayers twice for some of the nearly $15,000 he spent in 2007 on meals and travel.
The Aug. 26, 2015, on-airmurders ofWDBJ-TV journalists Alison Parker and Adam Ward.
United States