ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, July 7, 1996 TAG: 9607080089
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
Geneva Johnson wasn't sure why she didn't have a curb outside her house.
After all, she'd bought her place on 22nd Street Northwest in 1962 - and first requested curbing way back then. She even had a thick file, built up over the years, of correspondence with city officials about the project.
Still, no curb. Then, one night in March, Geneva Johnson pushed her walker into a meeting room at the Roanoke YMCA and told her story to a dozen or so other people - randomly selected Roanokers that The Roanoke Times had picked to talk about the upcoming City Council elections.
Her fellow residents were curious about the 70-year-old retired cab driver's plight, and so were we. We wrote a news story about Johnson's long quest for a curb and the city's unclear process for deciding which blocks get curbs and sidewalks and which ones don't.
Geneva Johnson's message got through this time. City Council ordered up a report on why some Roanokers have been waiting so long for curbs and sidewalks, to make a list of all the pending requests and to come up with a schedule to pay for them.
Asking people about their concerns and asking politicians how they intend to address them may seem a natural thing for a newspaper to do. But it's also a fundamentally different way of covering political campaigns - and one you'll be seeing a lot more of in our news pages in the coming months.
For more on how we'll be covering Campaign '96, and how you can help us do a better job on your behalf, see today's Horizon section.
LENGTH: Short : 38 linesby CNB