ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Wednesday, January 10, 1996 TAG: 9601100064
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
While most Southwest Virginia businesses were shut down by the weekend's record-setting snowstorm, The Roanoke Times stayed open. Problem was, most of the product couldn't be delivered.
Many subscribers haven't had a newspaper delivered since Saturday, even though the paper published every day.
Delivery should be back on normal deadlines today, said Helen Burnett, circulation director.
"A lot depends on road conditions and carriers being able to dig out their cars and get to their drop points," she said.
The newspaper is a transportation-dependent business, circulation employees said, and many carriers have been unable to get through the snow.
With the roads impassable, the circulation department faces two problems: carriers who can't get out of their own driveways to pick up the papers, and carriers who can't maneuver the roads on their routes.
Some routes are divided oddly - with one carrier successfully delivering to one side of a street, the other side going without because it has a different carrier.
"The time people want their paper the most is when they're shut inside," customer service manager Jenna Conner said. "The problem is, they don't see what troubles are out there."
The paper's circulation department logged more than 3,000 phone calls Tuesday, mostly from people wanting to know where their papers were.
They're coming, Burnett said. It may take carriers more than one day to deliver back issues that for some date to Sunday, but they will be delivered, she said. There has been no talk of canceling publication.
"We're committed to publishing every day," she said. "We got trucks out with papers every day."
Circulation workers also delivered papers to stores that were open and newspaper racks that could be reached. Convenience stores said they were selling more copies than normal, probably to subscribers who didn't get their issues at home.
A skeleton crew of editorial assistants, reporters, photographers and editors began working on storm coverage Sunday morning, with photographers picking up employees in a pair of four-wheel-drive vehicles. The full crew of pressmen also had to be picked up.
Production manager Vince Reynolds said that besides getting in enough employees to operate the presses, the main challenge has been finding someone to plow the parking lot so crews could drive the circulation trucks to the loading dock.
The newspaper leaves the newsroom, or is "put to bed," about 1:30 or 2 a.m., and the presses finish printing the final edition by 4 at the latest. The truck fleet fans out across the region, distributing bundles of papers to the carriers, who are supposed to get the paper to subscribers by 6:30 a.m. weekdays and 7:30 on weekends.
The Times normally prints two editions, but it has printed only one each day since Sunday. The trucks have been held at the loading dock until daylight - Monday, they didn't leave until 8 a.m. - to give snowplow crews a chance to clear the roads.
LENGTH: Medium: 62 linesby CNB