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Tag: The Roanoke Times

Roanoke Times union, Lee settle on new contract

The Roanoke Times newsroom union said Tuesday it has agreed on a new two-year contract with owner Lee Enterprises, following a brief picket line last week.

Members of the Timesland News Guild, which represents 30 employees of The Roanoke Times and Laker Weekly, will receive 2% annual raises, and minimum full-time pay will rise about 12% to $40,000 per year between now and 2023, according to a statement by the union. Equity adjustment raises also will take place, meaning that nearly half of the guild will receive raises of more than 2% this year.

Negotiations started in mid-February, with sticking points on wages and mileage rates. Layoff policies, more parental leave and paid time off also are included in the contract.

Lee had offered wage increases between 1% and 1.5%, while the guild sought an increase of 4%. The Iowa-based media company, which owns 31 newspapers in Virginia, also wanted to lower the mileage rate from 34 cents per mile to 32 cents per mile, while the union sought the 58.5 cents-per-mile rate set by the IRS. Lee announced it would voluntarily increase its rate by several cents beginning in April, the union said.

“We fought incredibly hard for additional pay raises and a higher minimum so The Roanoke Times can stay competitive with other papers,” Roanoke Times staff writer Alison Graham, the union’s vice chair and bargaining committee member, said in a statement. “Wages and other benefits ensure that our newspaper can continue to punch above its weight and drive important news coverage in Southwest Virginia.”

Ex-Roanoke Times press building to become apartments

Another former newspaper building will be turned into apartments.

The former Roanoke Times press building, located at 120 Salem Ave. in Roanoke, sold for $2.2 million. BH Media Group Inc. sold the 51,087-square-foot former press production facility to Belleview Investments LLC as a redevelopment property. A restauranteur shared his plans with The Roanoke Times last month to turn the building into apartments.

The downtown Roanoke building, constructed in 2003, will be turned into 70 studios and one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments.

It is connected by skybridge to the former office building that had been the newspaper’s home for more than a century. That building was put up for sale in January 2021 and the city bought it for the city’s public school system to use.

Construction crews will begin dismantling the newspaper’s press building immediately, according to a news release.

Barry Ward of Cushman & Wakefield | Thalhimer handled the sale negotiations on behalf of the buyer.

In the past few years, The Virginian-Pilot office building in downtown Norfolk was also sold and recently converted into apartments.

 

Newsroom unions urge Lee to reject Alden’s offer

A dozen Lee Enterprises newsroom unions, including three in Virginia, wrote an open letter to company management Monday, urging Lee to reject Alden Global Capital’s purchase offer of approximately $144 million.

“Alden has cut their staffs at twice the rate of competitors, resulting in the loss of countless jobs,” the letter reads. “They’ve fostered unhealthy and untenable workplaces that make it impossible to retain talent. They’ve shuttered physical newsrooms to leave journalists working from their cars, and at properties they lease, Alden stiffs local landlords for the rent. Their investment history is littered with bankruptcies and federal probes, and they use secretive money to fund their shady dealings.”

Among the signatories are the Richmond Newspapers Professional Association, representing newsroom employees at the Richmond Times-Dispatch; Blue Ridge NewsGuild, representing The Daily Progress in Charlottesville; and Timesland News Guild, The Roanoke Times’ newsroom union; as well as unionized newsrooms in Nebraska, Illinois, Iowa, Wisconsin, Montana, New York, Washington and the national United Media Guild.

Iowa-based Lee Enterprises owns 31 newspapers in Virginia, purchased in January 2020 from a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway Inc., Warren Buffett’s firm. Among the Virginia newspapers under Lee’s ownership are the Times-Dispatch; Bristol Herald Courier; The News & Advance in Lynchburg; The Free Lance-Star in Fredericksburg; Martinsville Bulletin; Danville Register & Bee; The News Virginian in Waynesboro; The Roanoke Times; and The Daily Progress.

On Nov. 22, Alden — which owns The Virginian-Pilot and Daily Press, among other dailies previously owned by Tribune Publishing Co. — proposed purchasing Lee Enterprises at $24 per share. If accepted by Lee, the acquisition would consolidate 12 of Virginia’s daily newspapers under one owner.

The unions have had earlier conflicts with Iowa-based Lee, which has laid off newsroom employees at most of its papers and moved copy editing and design duties to hubs in Wisconsin and Indiana, eliminating local copy desks at smaller newspapers. However, Alden is considered by many critics to be a killer of newspapers through buyouts and layoffs, as well as closing newsrooms and shutting down publications, a position shared by the Lee newsroom unions in their letter: “They are not good stewards of their investments. They do not even try to run a sustainable news company. They will not turn profits by growing the business and increasing revenue. They will do so by gutting newsrooms. They will take this proud company, built over decades of hard work, and leave it in ashes. Thousands of us will lose our jobs, and the communities we serve will never recover. Cities with weakened or shuttered newspapers have lower voter turnout, higher taxes, more corruption and increased polarization. Our democracy suffers, and Alden reaps the rewards.”

Alden currently owns more than 6% of Lee’s stock, and after its offer last week, Lee’s board adopted a “poison pill” plan that would allow other shareholders to buy shares at a 50% discount or possibly get free shares if Alden gains control of more than 10% of Lee’s stock, effectively killing the possibility of a hostile takeover while the board considers Alden’s offer.

Nine newsroom employees to be laid off at Roanoke Times

Nine newsroom employees at The Roanoke Times were notified of their pending layoffs Monday by parent company Lee Enterprises Inc., according to the newspaper’s local newsroom union and multiple staff writers who spoke with Virginia Business. The layoffs, set to take effect April 23, would cut the editorial staff to 37 positions, a nearly 20% decrease in newsroom staffing, the union said in a news release.

Virginia Tech beat reporter Henri Gendreau and Claire Mitzel, who covered local K-12 schools and broke news last year about Black cadets’ complaints about racial incidents at Virginia Military Institute, were told by phone that April 23 will be their last day as Roanoke Times employees, they said in interviews Monday afternoon. They say they were told not to work or to access their Roanoke Times email accounts during the next two weeks.

Michael Niziolek, who covered Virginia Tech football, was told he would be laid off, he said via Twitter, adding that he was “still in shock.” Sam Wall, who reported on Radford University and surrounding localities, said in an interview that he was told Monday to stop working during the call informing him of his imminent layoff.

The Timesland News Guild said in a news release Monday that the newspaper’s digital editor, one copy editor and three editorial assistants who contributed to local sports coverage also are among the layoffs, which took place a month after the union’s employee contract was certified March 10.

The Roanoke Times was purchased by Iowa-based Lee Enterprises in March 2020, part of a $140 million sale by Berkshire Hathaway Inc. of 31 local daily papers in 10 states, including 10 newspapers in Virginia. Roanoke saw seven copy editing jobs eliminated in favor of centralized editing and design hubs in the Midwest last summer, and newsroom positions at other Lee-owned papers in Virginia were eliminated earlier this year.

With the eliminated positions announced Monday, the Timesland union says The Roanoke Times has lost more than 25% of its newsroom employees since early 2020.

Under federal law, a company cannot lay off anyone while negotiating a contract with a union, or in the first 30 days after it has been certified, a period that ended Saturday at The Roanoke Times. Mitzel said “there was a lot of anxiety in the newsroom” in recent days, in part because Lee had laid off workers at other newspapers when The Roanoke Times’ unionized employees were temporarily exempt. The Roanoke Times building, owned by Berkshire Hathaway, also has been put up for sale, and the paper gave up its lease on its former New River Valley bureau office in Christiansburg.

“These layoffs mark another difficult day for The Roanoke Times and its continued survival in Southwest Virginia,” union vice chair Alison Graham, an investigative reporter at the newspaper, said in a statement. “Our corporate owners have once again put shortsighted profit goals over both long-term solutions and the newspaper’s mission to deliver vital local news.”

A Lee Enterprises spokesperson said Monday that the company had no comment on the layoffs.

In what Gendreau characterized as a “weird sort of holding pattern,” some of the Roanoke Times journalists notified Monday of their April 23 layoffs were told they could keep their jobs if other Times employees decide to take buyouts before Friday — but that’s not a sure thing.

“I personally am not sure” if anyone has volunteered, said Gendreau, who joined the newspaper as its crime and public safety reporter in 2018 and moved to its higher education beat in November 2019.

“I don’t know also whether [Lee] is open to that,” added Mitzel, a Roanoke native who started at the newspaper in March 2020. “I’d prefer they don’t take a volunteer for my job.”

Mitzel, Gendreau and Wall, who joined the newspaper in January 2019, said the layoff decisions were based on reverse seniority, or “last in, first out,” Wall said. All three said they’re disappointed about the negative impact on news coverage in the region, beyond their personal situations.

“I’m more worried about the institution that is The Roanoke Times,” Wall said. “That’s what I’m worried about. I’ll be OK.”

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