Roanoke Times

Eric Kallgren    Boulder, Colorado USA

Posted at 12:39am on Friday, April 24th, 2009

Debbie Meade is the president and publisher of The Roanoke Times, the leading newspaper in southwestern Virginia. Media Life magazine spoke with her on April 23, 2009, asking about the greatest challenge facing the newspaper during the recession:

"Clearly, the biggest challenge right now is that our advertising revenues are down significantly in many of our major categories due to the weak economy.

Newspapers are economically driven, and therefore economically sensitive businesses. When the economy is robust, and the need to advertise is strong, our revenues go up. When the economy is soft, we feel that in our revenues, too, particularly in the classifieds--jobs, cars, homes.

When jobs aren’t being created or filled, or cars aren’t selling, our customers have no choice but to scale back their advertising. They don’t want to, but they must in order to preserve their businesses until the economy springs back."

The full story:
http://www.medialifemagazine.com/artman2/publish/Newspapers_24/In_Roanoke_a_mid-size_paper_s_story.asp