Liz Kirchner joined the News Messenger/Radford News Journal in Sept. 2017 as the Community News editor of these two hyperlocal papers. The papers’ circulation is around 10,000 making it, interestingly, about the size of its own small town.
editor@ourvalley.org
Telling the small stories that make the big story, as Community News editor, Liz reported on square dancing, town council meetings, art, economic development, history, crime, tiny houses, farms, schools, cat colonies, libraries and cemeteries — the worlds within worlds that make a community.
She came to the paper by way of science writing in the US and abroad specializing in stories and long-form narrative about culture, landscape, history, and the environment. She wrote about heirloom apples in England, indigo production and trade routes in Mexico, and honey production in the hedgerows of Virginia. She sees community as a place where people, landscape and storytelling come together.
Now, moving to the editor’s desk, she is pleased to work with a band of curious, perceptive, well-connected writers, historians, sports aficionados, commentators and photographers making the century-old paper the county’s smartest, most engaged source for local news.
As editor, she decides what goes into the paper and what doesn’t.
“My loyalties, it sounds lofty, but I mean it, are to the truth, to the reader, and to the newspaper,” she said.
From her new desk, Liz will report on local government, community engagement and decision-making. In the field, she looks forward to covering all things Montgomery County and has a particular interest in local food access: school lunch coops, home gardens, soup kitchens, food pantries, restaurants, farmers’ markets, farms and dairies as they all work to feed us in the rural-urban cusp of Montgomery County.
Stop by the office at 302 W. Main Street in Christiansburg, or contact her at editor@ourvalley.org
