THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, August 18, 1996 TAG: 9608170075
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY NANCY LEWIS, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 55 lines
THERE'S a new newspaper in Norfolk, one that boasts a familiar media name: former TV weatherman ``Dr. Duane.''
The fourth edition of The Norfolk Weekly Register, a 10-page broadsheet with a focus on civic affairs, hit the stands and doorsteps on Wednesday.
Dr. Duane - Duane Harding, who was booted off the air at Channel 3 in January - writes a column for the paper.
The Register, which claims a circulation of 10,000, is edited and published by William T. Prince Jr. Prince is a 32-year-old Norfolk resident who recently returned to the city after stints in the Army and at daily and weekly newspapers elsewhere in the state.
In an interview, Prince would not discuss details of his operation or business plans. He declined to be photographed.
He was more open, however, about his own life.
Prince said he fell in love with newspapering more than two decades ago when, as a boy, he delivered The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk. He came to believe that providing people their daily news was a high calling, he said.
Prince graduated from Norfolk Catholic High School. He served in the Army, then went back into journalism.
Most recently, Prince wrote and edited a Brunswick County weekly, The Brunswick Times Gazette. Before that, he worked as a reporter for a Waynesboro daily.
He said that in launching the Register, he was simply filling a niche in the market.
People want to read ``about the things that matter - the basic little things in their lives,'' Prince said.
So the paper concentrates on community affairs.
It also gives readers Dr. Duane, a popular figure whose dismissal prompted anger among viewers last winter. Harding said he didn't have to long mull over Prince's offer to come on board.
He writes on various and sundry topics.
Ever wonder why those hot days in July are known as ``the dog days of summer''? As Dr. Duane explains in the July 31 edition, the ancient Romans accounted for July's hotter days despite a waning sun by pointing to Sirius, a bright star that's up during the day in the summer. It's in the constellation Canis Major, Latin for ``big dog.''
In the same edition, Harding raises the question of whether toilets and sinks do, in fact, drain counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere and clockwise below the equator, then advises the curious reader to go to his bathroom or kitchen sink and try it to find out.
Other components of the newspaper include news from Norfolk and its neighborhoods.
There are announcements, such as times and places of meetings of community groups.
Carl Meredith of the Lafayette-Winona Civic League likes the approach. He was passing out a stack of Registers at a recent Neighborhood Network meeting.
The new newspaper, he says, ``cares what goes on in the neighborhoods.'' by CNB