Sunday, January 25, 2009
Voices of the Valleys premieres
Luanne Traud
Recent columns
- Marking a difficult anniversary
- My daughter, the voter
- A few new Voices would be nice
- A rush to legislate
From the RoundTable blog
It is a rare thing in the newspaper business these days to be given the gift of additional space.
When we learned we would gain half a page in the Horizon section each Sunday, my first thought, after injuring myself in a poorly executed celebratory dance, was this:
We should do something different. Something that would engage more readers, draw them into a conversation. Something that would allow people from all walks and views of life to talk civilly about the issues of our day.
A mighty big mission for a space that seemed to shrink under its demands.
But what if this conversation began online without the constraints of column space? What if we elevated the online conversation beyond the rants of people posting anonymously who are not held accountable for their opinions? What if we then culled a sampling of opinions and published them in the new space?
And so went the conversations that Editorial Page Editor Dan Radmacher and I had before he announced on Dec. 17 that we would be forming a readers panel.
Radmacher asked those with an interest to e-mail a bio along with a fewer-than-300-word response to our first question regarding the impact of the economy.
Before I finished my first cup of coffee that Sunday morning, a dozen volunteers had filed into my e-mail inbox, eager to begin.
Dozens and dozens more (I lost count at 100) would pour in over the next two weeks, each person as interesting as the last, each with a voice different from the other. We had set out to gather diverse voices throughout the Roanoke and New River valleys.
In many ways, we have. There are teachers, students, engineers, nurses, doctors, railroad workers, business owners, union members, retirees, volunteers, lawyers, former public officials, former candidates, home-schooling moms, conservatives, liberals and people of no particular political leaning.
They agree with our editorials. They can't stand our editorials. They garden, canoe, bike, hike, read, fight for animal rights, fight against too many animal-rights laws, try new recipes, rail against the government for intruding in lives, rail against it for not helping the downtrodden.
They live in Roanoke, Christiansburg, Floyd, Bedford and beyond. Some have their own blogs, others have great difficulty navigating a log-in. They've lived in all 50 states and in Scotland, England, Korea and Venezula. Some have never left the valley. They've earned Ph.D.s and GEDs.
They are the Voices of the Valleys. The volunteers who wish to stretch beyond their comfort zone, to share their thoughts, listen to others' views and engage in a civil and enlightening conversation.
Today, on Page 5, you can begin to make their acquaintance. Each week we will feature at least one member with a short biographical sketch, and answers from several members responding to the question of the week.
If you'd like to read more of their responses and discuss their views, you are welcome to do so all week, every week at the online forum. Go to www.roanoke.com/voices.
While I'm quite pleased by the breadth of our contributors and of their eagerness to participate in this venture, I confess that I had hoped for a better mix of ages and races. Perhaps as we pick up online readers, we can close those gaps.
The panelists tend to mirror traditional readers of opinion pages and skew a little older. But that doesn't mean they aren't lively writers.
As Harlan B. Miller, a retired Virginia Tech philosophy professor, wrote in his introduction, "I am a pudgy, old, white guy with some resemblance to a beardless Santa. Old white guys are a dime a dozen around here, but not left-handed, blue-eyed, veteran, vegetarian, liberal, tree-and-bunny-hugging, atheist, old, white guys." I suppose not.
Then there's Clonnie H. Yearout, a 58-year-old conservative Southern Baptist and captain with the Roanoke Fire/EMS Department, who, following an introduction, writes, "I might better have described myself by simply stating that I am usually 180 degrees removed from the positions generally taken by The Roanoke Times. (I'm laughing here, although a bit snidely, perhaps.)"
I can't help but be intrigued about what Miller, Yearout and the others might have to say on the issues of the day. I hope you will be, too.
Traud is a member of The Roanoke Times editorial board.
