Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, February 28, 1993 TAG: 9303010213
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: F-3 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ALAN SORENSEN EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
REINVENTING ROANOKE
WITH THE "Peril and Promise" series that begins today, this newspaper embarks on a journey of discovery.I don't know where it will lead, but I hope it engages readers along the way in an extended conversation about our region and its future.
Where, as a community, are we? Where might we be headed? These are the questions we plan to pose in coming months, probably throughout the year, in both news stories and editorials.
Speaking for myself, I believe these questions are important because our region needs, in numerous ways, to reinvent itself.
I say this not because of any grievances with the area, a fantastic place to live.
Rather, I'm one of those who worry that the Roanoke and New River valleys' quality of life may be fragile, because it depends on a level of prosperity that's not assured.
Roanoke, like America itself, was founded not long ago in a wilderness. It was invented almost as if out of nothing, a community of immigrants.
Roanoke's reason for existence was as an intersection of tracks, a railroad town. Most of the surrounding development (even around Salem) occurred because Roanoke was here.
Today, a decade after Norfolk Southern's merger, and notwithstanding the continuing presence of rail operations, Roanoke no longer is a railroad town.
No one can be sure what we're becoming in its place, but surely it will be different.
Not so long ago, in Roanoke as elsewhere in America, children expected a better life than their parents enjoyed. Industrial employers offered lifelong job security. High-school educations promised stable employment. Wages and savings produced enough to buy a first home. The corporate headquarters was still in town.
No more. The world beyond the sheltering mountains is changing, and the changes are being felt here. As a region, we enjoy many options, but two not available are splendid isolation and the preservation of low-skill/high-wage jobs.
Hence the need for new regional definition and purpose, a new economic reason to exist. Reinvention, if you will.
I emphasize "region" because it seems to me that, whether or not we choose to think of ourselves as a community of interests, our future will be shared.
Some among us may believe that, within the region, one locality's destiny depends not at all on another's, and the affluent and the comfortable can forever isolate themselves from the fate of the struggling poor. I think they're wrong.
Regions, as much as countries or states or cities, are players now in a near-borderless worldwide marketplace. We are locked, like it or not, in an economic competition that will leave some regions winners, and others losers.
So if our fate is to be decided as a region, shouldn't we act like one? To do so, we might grope toward self-knowledge with a regional data base and an assessment of assets and liabilities. Regional leadership, backed by public consensus, could then chart out a regional strategy.
Or we can continue to drift, while others decide our economic destiny for us.
Don't get me wrong. I see more promise than peril in our circumstances. We all know and appreciate the assets: great people, strong educational institutions, nice neighborhoods, vital downtown, thriving cultural scene, etc. - and, always, the mountains.
The problem is that we're not using such assets to their full advantage, nor are we curbing the growth of liabilities.
Nothing's unusual about squabbling localities, strained by tensions in a struggling economy and lacking regional leadership or perspective. It's just that this picture hardly conforms with visions of a successful region in the next millennium.
All of which is only my opinion, of course. I note this because, for this newspaper, the "Peril and Promise" project is unprecedented not only in its scope, but also as a joint news and editorial endeavor.
News and editorial departments cooperated in planning the series, and will coordinate its preparation and publication in the months ahead. In doing so, the newspaper itself may be assuming risks - but none, I believe, that we can't address or avoid.
Some background: News columns are where you read facts - placed in perspective, of course, at times analytically. The newspaper's institutional agenda, set by the publisher, appears on editorial pages. The two functions are strictly separate.
Thus, at this newspaper, editorialists don't tell reporters how to slant their stories. And news gatherers don't tell editorial writers what editorial policy should be. This is how it has been, and how it still is.
In "Peril and Promise," news people are reporting about the region and its future because they judge this newsworthy. We on the editorial side will be promoting an agenda, but we don't oversee the news report. News and editorial remain distinct.
Even so, we are discovering we can work together, and this is nice. Scaling internal walls helps most organizations.
So does better data. For future installments in the series, we're developing an economic and demographic portrait of the region, based on census and other sources.
We're also seeking new ways to connect with readers. "Peril and Promise" will, I hope, stimulate community conversation.
Perhaps, like newspapers and other enterprises, a region needs to remind itself at times that it came together and still exists, in fundamental ways, as an economic entity.
Too, that it can find creative ways to cooperate and cohere internally, and compete externally. That it must measure its actions to assess and improve them. That the markets for its traditional products are not permanently given.
And that it must continuously reinvent itself, or risk an unpleasant fate.
I hope readers will join this discussion about our jobs and kids and future. Write with your opinions and suggestions. Our address and phone numbers appear in a box on the editorial page.