The Virginian-Pilot

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The June 6, 2007 front page of The Virginian-Pilot
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet

Owner	Landmark Communications
Publisher	Bruce Bradley
Editor	Denis Finley
Founded
Price	US$ 0.50 Daily US$ 1.25 Sunday
Headquarters	150 West Brambleton Avenue Norfolk, Virginia 23510 United States
Circulation	183,024 Daily 215,995 Sunday^[1]
ISSN	0889-6127

Website: PilotOnline.com

The Virginian-Pilot is a daily newspaper based in Norfolk, Virginia and serving southeastern Virginia, Virginia's Eastern Shore, and northeastern North Carolina, all part of the Hampton Roads community. It is owned by Landmark Publishing, part of the privately held Landmark Communications. It is the largest daily metro paper in the state of Virginia.

The Virginian-Pilot as it is known today owes its beginnings to a man named Samuel L. Slover, a young newspaper entrepreneur who set his sights on the south Hampton Roads area as a place that a solid Virginia newspaper could flourish. Through several purchases and mergers, Slover created a far-reaching daily paper serving the community, The Virginian-Pilot, and its sister afternoon edition, the Ledger-Star (which ceased publication in 1995). After laying a strong foundation for the newspapers, Slover passed control of the business to his nephew, Frank Batten, who became Publisher at age 27 in 1954. Frank Batten would later expand the company and create the Virginian-Pilot's now parent company, Landmark Communications, through the acquisition of several other daily and weekly newspapers, radio stations, and perhaps most notably, the creation of The Weather Channel, the nation's first cable weather station, still owned and operated by Landmark today.

The Virginian-Pilot received its second Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for then editor Lenoir Chamber's editorial articles on desegregation, a topic that was meeting with strong resistance in the southern state. In the 1920's Editor Louis Jaffe had received the Virginian-Pilot's first Pulitzer. Jaffe had been Chambers' mentor. In 1991, Frank Batten Jr. became Publisher of the Virginian-Pilot. Batten started the paper on the path of modernization for the emerging digital world, and in 1993 The Virginian-Pilot was one of the first newspapers in the country to launch its own website, Pilotonline.com. Batten quickly moved on to Landmark corporate and is currently Chairman and CEO of Landmark Communications. He was followed as publisher by "Dee" Carpenter in 1995, who stepped down in 2005. The position is currently held by Bruce Bradley, who is also president of Landmark Publishing.

The Virginian-Pilot's main office is still housed in the original 1940s building located in Downtown Norfolk, Virginia. The paper's printing facility (once part of the original building) is now located off-site in the city of Virginia Beach, and the company operates several satellite offices in other areas of Hampton Roads, including another Virginia Beach office, a Suffolk office, and in the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

The Virginian-Pilot is encompassed by Pilot Media Companies, a group which includes Pilotonline.com/Hamptonroads.com, Pilot Direct printing, LNC (Local News on Cable)/Pilot13 News, Hamptonroads.tv, Inside Business, Link, Portfolio Weekly, The Flagship, Military Newspapers of Virginia, and many other supplemental print and web businesses.

The Virginian-Pilot's critically acclaimed teen "757" Section is published every Friday. Written by teenagers, the 757 Section covers a wide array of subjects from illegal tattoos to gay prom. Teen correspondents for the 757 Section produce a podcast, Teencast, that discusses events in the teen world.

On January 3, 2008, it was reported that the family owned Landmark Communications, parent company of The Virginian-Pilot, may be for sale.^[2]