Coming on board as public editor with the news that Landmark Communications, and with it The Virginian-Pilot, is likely to be sold is a daunting endeavor. An end to the century-old tradition of leadership by a family with a historic commitment to public service journalism is a troubling prospect for Hampton Roads. While it might take time to find a buyer in what is widely perceived as a sluggish market for media properties, newspaper sales in recent years suggest that the Batten family’s devotion to the news business will be hard to replicate.
The way in which news of the possible sale landed on The Pilot’s front page 10 days ago and the unanswered questions surrounding the dismantling of Landmark Communications have provided abundant – though perhaps combustible – material for this, my introductory column as The Pilot’s first independent public editor. In effect, I’m the watchdog on the watchdog, which puts me in a most unenviable spot this week.
Any assessment of how well The Pilot served its readers in telling the story of the proposed sale leads to the doorstep of Landmark’s chairman and chief executive officer, Frank Batten Jr. The decision, as he noted, was his alone. His words and actions colored the initial coverage. To be sure, he faced an irreconcilable conflict between the preservation of his corporation’s private interests – in which he has clear fiduciary obligations – and service to his newspaper’s public responsibilities – which is part of his birthright. The best that can be said is that he protected the corporate interests.
As a result, rather than break the story, Pilot reporters were left to chase it. The early reports were unilluminating. The community remains largely in the dark about Landmark’s intentions.
That the story was broken by The New York Times before it broke in The Pilot demonstrates the quandary a newspaper faces when reporting on itself. No single event could have better illustrated the paradox of a news operation’s commitment to reporting the news and a corporate inner sanctum’s penchant for secrecy, especially when a colossal financial deal is in the offing. For some readers, insider stories are an annoyance, perceived at one extreme as excessive naval gazing and at the other as sugar-coated helpings of corporate propaganda. In this instance, however, most readers likely feel they have a stake in the hometown newspaper’s future.
Batten had planned to inform employees and the wider world of his decision on Jan. 3. That rollout was undone late Jan. 2 by a New York Times report that the Weather Channel was up for auction and might fetch $5 billion.
At The Pilot, a sharp-eyed deskman divined from a cryptic line in that day’s listing of wire stories that something was afoot inside the building. Calls went out to the business news team at 9:30 p.m. They were back at their desks and working the phones in less than 30 minutes to produce the story about their own paper.
As publisher Bruce Bradley acknowledged in a message to The Pilot’s 1,200 employees, it was “shabby way” to learn the news.
In a Jan. 3 interview with Pilot staffers Phil Walzer and Bill Choyke, Batten made comments that revealed the newsroom/boardroom conflict. From the beginning, the business team had been counseled by Editor Denis Finley to “cover this just as aggressively as we would any similar change at Norfolk Southern or any other big business. It would be hypocrisy to do otherwise.” Walzer said he asked all the obvious questions and kept asking them even as Batten repeatedly deflected those efforts.
As portrayed in the story that followed, Batten left little doubt about whose interests were uppermost. “I’m just trying to do a good job for our shareholders,” he said. In a possible sale, those shareholders’ interests are doubtless best served by revealing less rather than more information. But his fiduciary responsibilities aside, in the absence of any parallel statement of concern for his employees, for The Pilot’s readers or for the community that helped his family build its empire, it all seemed a bit cold-hearted.
Of course, because Landmark is a privately held corporation, Batten has absolutely no obligation to disclose any information about the company, its stockholders, membership of its board or the value of its stock. He has historically refused to discuss those questions, and Landmark Vice Chairman Richard Barry did so again in a recent interview. As board chairman, Batten might legitimately argue that the corporation’s interests are best served by withholding such information.
While he took full responsibility for the decision to dismantle Landmark, Batten’s circumscribed answers did little to clarify the two overarching questions on readers’ minds: Why and why now?
In addition, in the absence of explicit criteria, his vague assurance that he would steer clear of “inappropriate buyers” provided no comfort. Is an inappropriate buyer one whose bid is inappropriately low? Or is an inappropriate buyer someone who is likely to eviscerate this newspaper’s historic mission? What efforts are contemplated to ensure that the newspaper’s traditions of excellence will be continued under new ownership?
The stories that immediately followed the Batten interview filled lots of space but offered little enlightenment. One article explored employee reactions to news of the sale, another served up assurances that the Batten family’s philanthropy would continue after the sale. A Jan. 5 story about the possibility of a merger with the Daily Press in Newport News seemed to be a red herring, little more than a discussion of an unlikely possibility.
After that, the story seemed to lose its pulse, at least until Thursday, when reporter Tom Shean identified members of Landmark’s board and revealed names of the corporation’s major shareholders. Walzer’s article Friday about a possible bid for the newspapers by Pat Robertson, founder of The Christian Broadcasting Network, was similarly edifying.
The Batten family’s century-long ownership of The Pilot makes it a star in the multibillion-dollar Landmark galaxy. On some of journalism’s most deeply held principles, The Pilot has led other newspapers by its example. It was, in fact, one of the first U.S. newspapers to provide readers a person and a place to air their concerns. The kind of self-examination that comes with appointing a public editor, a step taken here in 1974, has long been unwelcome in many American newsrooms.
The New York Times finally took that step in 2003, after a staffer scandalized his profession with plagiarized and fictionalized stories. Despite that scandal and many others, fewer than 40 American newspapers have a newsroom watchdog.
The Pilot’s commitment to accountability to readers, accuracy, fairness and taste is the only coin that buys credibility here or at any newspaper. My hope is to serve those ideals in the coming months.
