<p>Hi everyone,
I just joined this group, so I hope I'm not out of line with this posting.</p>
<p>My name is Greg Esposito. I cover higher education for The Roanoke Times in Roanoke, Va. I'm based in our Blacksburg office because Virginia Tech consumes 99 percent of my beat.</p>
<p>A little about me, I'm originally from Rhode Island but have been in Va. since enrolling at W&L in 1996. Been covering higher ed issues for about a year and a half (first Radford University then Tech)</p>
<p>Just from reading some of the threads it's obvious you people are pretty in tune and interested in what's going on in higher education. I'm always looking for story ideas and thought I'd fish for some here. Anything and everything that you think is an important issue or may be an important issue in higher education. While I need to localize my sources (not writing for the Chronicle after all) Tech is such a big school and there are so many schools in the area that I find I can localize most national issues -- for instance I've written about Helicopter Parents and am in the process of writing a big story on the idea of rankings in higher ed -- that's how I happened upon the site.</p>
<p>So please, post some ideas that you think are important and/or have been neglected or misrepresented by the mainstream media. The paper is pouring resources into higher ed and now's a great time to pitch those stories. We even have a college life blog you can link to off our web site -- <a href="http://www.roanoke.com%5B/url%5D">www.roanoke.com</a>.</p>
<p>If you want to contact me personally rather than post on the thread email me at <a href="mailto:greg.esposito@roanoke.com">greg.esposito@roanoke.com</a> or call me at 1-800-346-1234 ext. 675 or 540-381-1675.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>