Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 24, 1993 TAG: 9302240131
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-6 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: Chuck Burress
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
THEY SAID THE CURRENT COULDN'T BE DONE
Today the New River Current marks its fifth anniversary.The funny thing is, there were those who said a publication of this type couldn't be done six days a week in a market of this size.
Yet the Current has sustained itself as a widely read section for readers and advertisers. But you already knew that.
As the fifth anniversary approached this month, the staff of the New River Current asked me to write about my recollections of the start up of the section back in 1988 when I was its editor.
I remember well the day that a small group of Roanoke editors took a chartered plane to Norfolk to talk with the "experts" at our sister newspapers there.
The Virginian-Pilot and Ledger-Star had established a number of high-quality zoned newspaper sections throughout Virginia Beach and Tidewater.
We took along a mockup edition of how the Current was proposed to look - and long lists of questions and brainstorming ideas on how we thought the section should be developed.
We were pumped up over the potential of Current. I don't think that Roanoke Times & World-News editors ever had any doubt, by that point, that this was the way to go.
Our Norfolk brothers and sisters, however, just looked at each other and shook their heads.
"You really think you're going to be able to do this six times a week?" they smirked.
I suppose that we just saw the opportunity differently from those folks. Current took hold from the beginning and here we are five years later still publishing it every day except Mondays.
The section has been refined, to be sure. Many readers at first told us they didn't care for its "featurey" look and efforts were made to integrate more hard news on the cover. This went over well with some of our skeptical-as-ever reporters, too.
Eventually, about three years ago, a revamped press schedule gave Current a later deadline that resulted in even more news coverage being shifted to its pages from other sections of the paper.
Creation of the New River Current was spurred in large part by a major retailing event - the opening of the New River Valley Mall at Christiansburg in March 1988.
The anticipated added demand from advertisers and the need for expanded color advertising pointed the newspaper toward developing a distinctive local section to deliver a package of zoned news and advertising.
Indeed, the cover story of the first edition was about the approaching mall opening, under the headline " `Downtown' New River." The point being that some were touting the mall as an entity that would alter shopping patterns and become the new "downtown" for the region.
We confused a lot of readers with that first edition of Current, our publicity efforts notwithstanding. Many told us later that they didn't realize it was a news section of the paper. They saw the aerial color photo of the mall and thought it was an advertising piece.
The Current in 1993 is the evolution of expanded coverage in the New River region that was begun by the Roanoke Times & World-News in the late 1960s.
The first local editor, Randy Jessee, worked out of his home in Blacksburg. Eventually the newspaper established offices at Christiansburg in a trailer, followed by a double-wide and then a permanent building in 1982.
During the early 1970s, twice-weekly pages of news and advertising were added for Montgomery County and Radford readers.
The Montgomery edition became the tri-weekly New River Valley section in 1977 when Pulaski and Giles counties were added to its circulation. Floyd County readers were added later. Wythe County readers began receiving Sunday Currents last year.
What I remember most about starting Current was the intense work of so many people to take it from drawing board to the hands of readers in about two months' time. Many of those folks still work with Current today, and the section is in good hands.
There were so many logistical matters to keep track of that they filled a loose-leaf "issues" notebook: design decisions; selecting a name for the section; hiring additional personnel as part of a stepped-up news commitment; introducing the Current to readers; choosing new content features for our New River readers, such as expanded coverage of leisure time activities.
On the afternoon of Feb. 23, 1988, I snatched and saved the first-ever Current as it came up the conveyor belt from the press in Roanoke. Somehow we had pulled it off. It was fun to have been a part of it.
Chuck Burress was New River Current editor when it began publishing Feb. 24, 1988. He became publisher of The Gazette at Galax in October 1989. The Roanoke and Galax newspapers are owned by Landmark Communications.
Keywords:
FIVE YEARS OF THE NEW RIVER CURRENT\