Your week in the Star City,
in about ten minutes.
Local news, events, and stories from the Roanoke Valley — every Monday.
Local news, events, and stories from the Roanoke Valley — every Monday.
April 27, 2026
Virginia voters narrowly approved a mid-decade redistricting referendum, redrawing Roanoke's 6th Congressional District from heavily red to slightly blue — and the local field is already shifting. Sam Rasoul announced he won't run; Tom Perriello pivoted from the 5th to the 6th. Plus: VT AD Whit Babcock is retiring after 12 years, Spanberger named four new VT Board of Visitors appointees ahead of the presidential search, VDOT's I-81 widening project is underway, the Member One / Virginia Credit Union merger has locked some members out of their accounts, and Catawba's Homeplace Restaurant reopened after five years.
I'm Swain. I was driving home after dropping off one of my kids, listening to a national news podcast, and I thought: why isn't there something like this for Roanoke? A quick weekly rundown of what's actually happening locally. The kind of thing I could listen to on the way to work and feel caught up.
I also find myself looking up events every single week. What's going on this weekend, where to take the kids. That information is scattered across a dozen websites and Facebook pages.
So I wanted to build it. I don't have the time or the talent to make a traditional podcast with real hosts, but I'm a software developer, so I built a pipeline instead. Every week, I go through the Roanoke Times, WDBJ, WSLS, Cardinal News, and local event calendars, pull out what matters, and write a script. The curation is human. The voices are AI, through ElevenLabs. Alex and Morgan aren't real people, but the stories are.
This is a small, independent project. Just local news, done weekly, for people who care about this place.
If it's useful to you, share it with one person in the valley. That's how this grows.
The voices you hear — Alex and Morgan — are generated using ElevenLabs text-to-speech. They aren't real people. But every story is researched and written by a real person who lives in the Roanoke Valley. The AI reads the script; it doesn't write it.
Each week, I review reporting from the Roanoke Times, WDBJ, WSLS, Cardinal News, and local event calendars. I pick the stories that matter, paraphrase the facts, cite the sources, and encourage listeners to support those outlets directly.
Email hello@theroanokeweekly.com. I read everything.