Lee Enterprises to lay off 9 local newsroom staffers at The Roanoke Times
For Immediate Release: April 12, 2021
Contact: (540) 339-7635
ROANOKE, Va. — Iowa-based Lee Enterprises announced Monday it plans to lay off nine people at The Roanoke Times, more than 20% of the unionized staff, effective April 23.
“These layoffs mark another difficult day for The Roanoke Times and its continued survival in Southwest Virginia,” said Alison Graham, an investigative reporter and union vice chair. “Our corporate owners have once again put short-sighted profit goals over both long-term solutions and the newspaper’s mission to deliver vital local news.”
The Roanoke Times has seen its newsroom staff slashed by more than 25% since early 2020, when it was acquired by Lee Enterprises.
The additional cuts announced Monday will further weaken local journalism at a time when Southwest Virginia deserves more coverage and more investment.
“More cuts won’t make us profitable — only investment can do that,” said Tonia Moxley, a veteran reporter and chair of the union. “In 2012, we had more than 100 staffers and 90,000 subscribers. Today, we have 46 staffers and 30,000 subscribers. More cuts mean fewer readers.”
The Timesland News Guild’s first contract, ratified March 10, required the company to provide two weeks’ notice of any layoffs and will guarantee staffers certain severance benefits. No such protections had been in place prior to the newsroom’s decision to unionize in 2020.
The cuts being imposed will reduce the newsroom to a staff of 37 — down from 46 — reporters, photographers, copy editors, editors and other professionals.
“This round of layoffs is yet another example of how little Lee Enterprises cares for local news gathering,” said Tad Dickens, a longtime reporter and a union vice chair. “Profits reign over public knowledge.”
The layoffs follow the outsourcing of the newspaper’s page design work to out-of-state corporate hubs last year as well as the shuttering of the Christiansburg office long used by its New River Valley bureau. The newspaper’s flagship office in downtown Roanoke was listed for sale in January.
Despite these developments, the local staffers who serve the community have remained committed to sharing the region’s stories and delivering crucial information in an unprecedented time.
In the past year, Timesland journalists have secured outside fellowships to investigate complex stories about health care and education, won recognition from the Associated Press Sports Editors and been honored for excellence in covering the region’s agricultural community.
In March 2020, Lee Enterprises purchased about half of Virginia’s daily newspapers in a deal struck with prior owner BH Media Group.
Six months later, it began axing newsroom jobs across its new acquisitions. The Timesland News Guild was able to forestall deeper cuts at the time as its contract negotiations were ongoing.
The newsroom now enters a period during which workers can negotiate buyouts or other agreements in order to reduce involuntary layoffs.
That process will take several days to complete. Lee Enterprises said it plans to eliminate four reporters, one digital editor, one copyeditor and three editorial assistants.
### About The Roanoke Times: Serving Southwest Virginia since its founding in 1886, The Roanoke Times publishes a daily newspaper with about 30,000 print subscribers and more than 40,000 digital readers. It is the largest professional news outlet in the region.
### About The NewsGuild-Communications Workers of America: The NewsGuild-CWA represents more than 24,000 journalists and other media workers in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico, including The Roanoke Times, Laker Weekly, The (Charlottesville) Daily Progress, The Virginian-Pilot and The Washington Post.
