Last Updated: May 20, 1999
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An
American Editor
Roanoke, Va., editor finds tradition part of landscape
A deeply rooted community makes being an editor at
The Roanoke Times easier, Wendy Zomparelli says, but it carries with it
a responsibility to keep the paper local, local, local
By Janet Weaver
Wendy Zomparelli grew up in California, a place she describes as
the quintessential transient place. But she’s found her home personally
and professionally in Virginia’s Roanoke Valley, a place of strong tradition
and deep roots. Roanoke is the kind of community that feels a strong connection
to its newspaper. That’s a feeling Zomparelli and her staff are working
hard to nurture into the next century.
Q. Let’s talk a bit about the paper’s role in the community. Your
paper serves a community that is isolated from major media markets. What
does that mean for the newspaper?
A. Well, in a sense it’s nice that there isn’t a lot of direct competition
for the newspaper. On the other hand, Roanoke’s isolation is one of the
reasons that the economy here is not growing robustly. So we’re constantly
scrambling to try to make the ad revenue budgets in what is essentially
a flat market. So that has made it tough on the resource side. But it’s
a nice place to live. And it’s a community with very deep roots, which
makes it very interesting to write about.
Q. What do you mean when you talk about deep roots?
A. People tend to stay here. And so there’s a long tradition and a long
understanding of the region, and there’s a lot of pride in the region.
It’s not a terribly diverse market. If you look at the whole 19-county
coverage area, it’s something like 12 percent African-American, 1 percent
Asian or other. There is a lot of tradition here and a lot of pride in
this part of the country and a lot of people who have extended family here
and have a lot invested in the place. I grew up in Southern California,
which is, I think, the quintessential transient place. So I think in some
ways it makes it easier to be a newspaper editor in a community where the
roots are deep. Of course, there are a lot of different elements in any
community. But there are a lot of common understandings here.
Q. What do you think the common understanding is when it comes to
the biggest problems facing your region?
A. Economic development is a huge issue because the economy is somewhat
flat. The political divisions here — depending on how you count, there
are four or five governments in the Roanoke Valley — make it difficult
for the communities and the governments to go after industry in a coordinated
way.
The demographics are older than the national average, and that’s because
a lot of younger folks have to leave the community to find the kind of
stimulating work they are looking for. So economic development is a huge
issue. One of the shining examples of development has been the restoration
of downtown Roanoke, which is doing very well.
But there are still problems to be solved downtown. We recently did
a series that began after a grandmother and four children were killed in
a house fire. They were living in a rental house that was not up to code,
and this was just about a mile from downtown. So we started looking at
the housing stock that is located near this little gem of a downtown, because
if you’re going to maintain a really vibrant downtown, you can’t have the
communities around it dying.
Q. What other tough issue stories do you face in your community?
A. Well, teen pregnancy, for instance. Roanoke is no longer the No.
1 in the state for teen pregnancy, but it hasn’t been long ago that it
used to be. Roanoke is sometimes called the capital of western Virginia
— it’s the biggest city in the region, so as a result a lot of people who
live in rural communities look to Roanoke when they need help. It has become
a kind of magnet for people needing social services. A lot of AIDS patients
come to Roanoke for treatment, for instance. Roanoke tends to be the place
in the region where the social issues play out.
Q. Coverage of those issues plays to a newspaper’s traditional strengths,
and those stories certainly tend to excite reporters. But how do you balance
that part of the community with the rest of community life?
A. That’s something we’ve been working very hard at doing, to make the
newspaper reflect the lives of most of our readers. We were prompted to
do it to some extent through some attitudinal research we did. In the research,
almost 30 percent of the people surveyed agreed or strongly agreed with
the statement, "Very few stories in the newspaper are about people like
me." That concerned us. We began trying to look at our pages more critically
through the eyes of readers instead of through only the eyes of journalists.
We were very careful in the series I mentioned to explain why the condition
of the inner city should matter to you if you live in the suburbs. We wrote
about how other places have overcome similar problems, so we didn’t just
paint this grim picture.
Apart from that, we’re trying to have more stories in the paper about
regular people. For example, we started a new section, At Work, to give
more information about careers. Instead of writing from an institutional
perspective, we decided to show working life in the Roanoke Valley through
the eyes of people who work. It’s been a conscious effort on our part to
reflect the full range of experience here, which for most people is a very
good life.
Q. How do you do that with the staff? How do you convince reporters
those stories are newsworthy?
A. It’s been an evolution. And actually, it’s gone hand in hand with
our evolution to a team-based management structure, which we’ve been at
for almost six years. I know that there are some folks in the newsroom
who are still troubled, but by and large, most seem to feel pretty good.
We’re not saying we’re never going to write about problems, that you have
to go out and do something chipper. But there are a lot of really positive
stories, people who are turning their lives around. I guess I don’t understand
why that’s a less valid story, a community that’s rejuvenating as opposed
to a community that’s decaying.
Q. Does that philosophy affect how you recruit?
A. We use a team hiring process now. Given strong journalistic credentials
and writing skills, we’re looking for people who don’t see the world as
totally dysfunctional. We’ve seen something of a change in the kind of
people who are attracted to the paper and the kind of people we’re attracted
to hiring.
We have many people who have chosen to come here for reasons of quality
of life, who could have worked in almost any market but chose to come here.
As a result I think our talent pool is much deeper than most newspapers
our size. Roanoke is just a wonderful place to raise a family. "Rush hour’’
lasts about 20 minutes.
Q: Do your readers notice the difference?
A. Some certainly have. I don’t know to what extent, but I’ve certainly
heard comments that they notice the difference when I’ve been out in the
community. People seem to be aware that there’s a conscious effort on our
part. We don’t have an ombudsman, but we have started a periodic column
called From the Newsroom, where we write about ourselves and our decision-making.
Q. That’s an interesting idea. What do you talk about in the column?
A. Well, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about which contests we enter
and which we don’t. We went into our philosophy about awards, how we never
go into an assignment thinking we’re going to win a prize. We’ve used the
column to talk about how headlines get written, why we had fought a subpoena
to have a reporter testify in a trial — a host of the things we’ve heard
people wonder about over time. We’re revising our professional standards
of conduct now, and when we’re finished, we’ll write about that in the
column and make copies of it available to the public. I think people are
really interested in our business and kind of mystified by it.
Q. Before you became editor, you worked on the business side as
the assistant to publisher Walter Rugaber. Did you find that helpful preparation
for becoming the editor?
A. It was a wonderful experience. I worked as Walter’s assistant for
three years and much of what I did in that time had to do with strategic
planning for the newspaper. And I also lead a research project for all
three Landmark newspapers. I also did a really fascinating project — and
people laugh when I say that — on ad rates. When Walter first told me to
do the ad rates project, I felt the same way as when my high school teacher
told me I had to take calculus. But that was really a wonderful opportunity,
because there aren’t many ways that newsroom people can get their hands
in the ad side and still keep that balance that allows them to come back
into the newsroom.
Q. What long-term contribution did the time working as Walter’s
assistant make to your development as an editor?
A. What it mostly gave me was a much better understanding of the business
dynamics, the company dynamics and the corporate dynamics, so that I’m
in a much better position not only to protect but to grow the resources
of the news department. I think as editor that is one of my main functions
— to make sure that people have what they need to do their best work. Sometimes
that’s dollars, sometimes that’s time, sometimes that’s more colleagues
so that someone can be freed up to do that project that takes a year.
I do think that the challenge for editors — one of the main things we
have to do — is make sure the journalistic needs of the staff and of the
newspaper are met and that they are understood by our colleagues in the
other departments. So if someone wants to do something that would compromise
the journalism, we can make that argument effectively and be understood.
And, of course, just getting to work closely with Walter was wonderful.
He’s such a phenomenal journalist and a phenomenal man. And we spent a
lot of time talking about news, so that by the time he thought he might
want me to be editor, we had a really thorough understanding of each other’s
sensibilities. I tell him I think editors are supposed to give their publishers
more trouble! We seem to be in agreement almost all the time.
Q. What goals do you have for the paper as we head to 2000?
A. We want to get even better at getting closer to the community. We
want people to feel really connected with the community through us. We
want to be the place they come to for all kinds of information. So we’re
working hard to improve our online site at roanoke.com. We’ve done a tiny
bit of independent reporting for our site. In doing the series that we
did on conditions of the inner city, we created from scratch a database
on who owns what property downtown, who has been cited for violations,
when it was last inspected. We’re taking that part of our future very seriously.
I think there’s still a lot of question about how we’ll be delivering the
news over the next 10 years, but I think there’s not a lot of question
about the fact that people want the very local information that we are
good at giving them. So that’s a huge part of our mission.
Q. Final question — this is my "if you were a tree’’ question. What
inspires you?
A. What inspires me is the people I work with. I can’t think of a business
where you get to work with as many interesting and talented people, who
also have their heads on straight. We have an outstanding group of editors
here. The people on the editing team really get along well, there’s a huge
amount of mutual respect, there’s a lot of energy, I think we have a really
strong sense of the goal. That’s what keeps me going: the chance to come
down here and work with the really talented people who keep me going every
day.
I got into the business because I loved to write, and that has completely
fallen out of my life. But I don’t really miss it that much, because what
has replaced it is giving the people around me a chance to do really interesting
things. And seeing them grow and develop is really such a high.
It’s a lot like the same kind of joys you get from raising a child.
To see someone do something that he or she didn’t think they could do,
to set them free to do it is incredible.
Weaver, co-chair of The American Editor Committee, is managing editor
of the Sarasota (Fla.) Herald-Tribune.
