NewsCardinal News: Covering What Matters to Readers
Former employees of the Roanoke Times launched Cardinal News in September 2021, setting out to fill gaping holes in news coverage of rural Southwest and Southside Virginia from the Appalachians across the Piedmont.
NewsA Weekly Thrives at the Bottom of the Middle Peninsula
Family ties run deep at the Gloucester-Mathews Gazette-Journal. When nonagenarian John Warren Cooke died in 2009 after 55 years as president and publisher, the former Speaker of the Virginia House of Delegates was succeeded by his daughter, Elsa Cooke Verbyla, who had been the editor and a reporter at the weekly since 1976. Its main office and printing plant have sat on Gloucester Courthouse’s Main Street for 75 years and its roots go back more than a century.
NewsStill Keeping Watch
The biggest story Brian Carlton has tracked since becoming editor of the Farmville Herald is one that might come as a surprise to most Virginians: the possibility that mining companies might resume digging for gold as was once commonplace in the 1800s and even into the 1940s.
NewsCreating a ‘Worthy’ Community Newspaper
When Tom Lappas graduated from the University of Richmond with a journalism degree in 1998, his dream job was to become a sportswriter at a daily. But he also wanted to stay in Richmond and wound up at a community paper in nearby Henrico County, Virginia’s sixth largest county by population (333,000). Something clicked, and three years later he left to launch his own twice-a-month paper, the Henrico Citizen, and convinced three fellow reporters to join him.
NewsA Nonprofit Digs Deeper into News Online
Six years out of college, Sarah Vogelsong made $11 an hour when she landed her first newspaper job at the Caroline Progress in 2014. The minimum wage in the Commonwealth was $7.25 at that time. She left in 2016, two years before the paper closed.
NewsAs Newspapers Struggle, Local News is Harder to Find in Virginia
By Christopher Connell for Foothills Forum It is, unfortunately, old news. Virginia’s newspapers, the single biggest source of local news, face unprecedented challenges, with their readers, revenues and staffs steadily …
NewsHome Is the Sound of Rivers and Crooked Roads
Elsa Howell, who is learning the art of Appalachian ballad singing through our Virginia Folklife Apprenticeship Program, reflects on the important role music plays in her culture and community.
NewsVirginia Local News Summit
Over two days in April 2023, leaders in journalism, academia, public policy, business, and the humanities offered diverse perspectives on how to sustain robust local journalism.
NewsJoshua Purnell & Tom Norris
For dancer Joshua Purnell and his apprentice Tom Norris, blues dancing is a means to build and maintain community in their hometown of Norfolk.
NewsFive Questions with Katy Gehred
This spring, Katy Gehred joined our team as the new media editor for Encyclopedia Virginia. We caught up with her to talk about her new job, why she chose to study women’s history, and to find out more about the history podcast that she runs in her spare time.
NewsFood for Thought
We all remember what it was like entering the social battleground known as the school cafeteria. Aside from the usual cliques, there were two types of students: those who brought their lunch and those who bought their lunch. Marcus Weaver-Hightower says public schools should offer free lunches to all students.
