Valerie Garner Going Independent with Web Site

Val at the recent Riverside Project press conference (the local daily missed it)

For the past couple of years, I've wondered--often out loud--why Valerie Garner was writing weekly for the weakly Roanoke Star, a newspaper that needed her far more than she needed it. Now, she's caught on to the wisdom of moving online and owning her words.

She is now putting all of her efforts--or most of them anyway--into Roanoke Free Press, her website and the Roanoke Valley political news you want will be there on a regular basis. You can catch her on Facebook and Twitter, as well, for the breaking stuff.

Val's work is often the best of any outlet in the Roanoke Valley and certainly the most comprehensive. The daily paper here has people with far better credentials, who write better and receive better editing, but Val kills them almost daily with her depth and her understanding of what she's writing and how it affects people.

I hope you will visit her site, mark it and see just how impressive this old lady is in her dotage. She's in her mid-60s and she's still beating the crap out of the journalism kids. Let me also suggest that any of you with a few advertising bucks to spend, throw some of the Val's way. This will help ensure she continues and we need for her to do that.