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| Type | Dailynewspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Tribune Publishing |
| Founder | Samuel Slover |
| Publisher | Par Ridder (Interim General Manager) |
| Editor | Kris Worrell |
| Founded | 1865 |
| Headquarters | 703 Mariners Row Newport News, VA 23606 |
| Circulation | 58,196 Daily 54,880 Saturday 71,020 Sunday (as of 2021)[1] |
| ISSN | 0889-6127 |
| Website | www |
The Virginian-Pilot is the dailynewspaper forHampton Roads, Virginia. Commonly known asThe Pilot, it is Virginia's largest daily. It serves the five cities of South Hampton Roads as well as several smaller towns across southeast Virginia and northeast North Carolina. It was a locally owned, family enterprise from its founding in 1865 at the close of theAmerican Civil War[2] until its sale toTribune Publishing in 2018.[3] Its headquarters is inNewport News, and prior to 2020 was inNorfolk.
TheVirginian-Pilot is owned by parent company Tribune Publishing. This company was acquired byAlden Global Capital, which operates its media properties throughDigital First Media, in May 2021.[4][5][6][7][8]
The newspaper has won three Pulitzer Prizes. The first was won in 1929 by editorLouis Jaffe, who received thePulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing for "An Unspeakable Act of Savagery", an editorial which condemnedlynching. Jaffe mentored the paper's next editor,Lenoir Chambers, who in 1960 received the same prize for his editorials ondesegregation, as exemplified by "The Year Virginia Closed the Schools" and "The Year Virginia Opened the Schools". The paper was one of the few in Virginia to publicly support the end ofJim Crow. In 1985, Thomas Turcol was awarded thePulitzer Prize for General News Reporting for his coverage ofcorruption inChesapeake.[9] Reporters atThe Pilot have also finished as Pulitzer finalists three times since 2007.[9]
The Virginian-Pilot and its sister afternoon edition, theLedger-Star (which ceased publication in 1995) were created by Samuel L. Slover as the result of several mergers of papers dating back to 1865.[10]The Virginian-Pilot covered theWright brothers' early flights.[11] Slover's nephewFrank Batten Sr. became publisher at age 27 in 1954. He expanded theVirginian-Pilot's parent company, which soon evolved into Landmark Communications and laterLandmark Media Enterprises, by acquiring other newspapers and radio and television stations and by creatingThe Weather Channel, now owned by a group of investors led byNBC Universal.[10] In Norfolk, on September 1, 1923, the company founded Virginia's firstradio station,WTAR.[12] In 1950 it added Channel 4 WTAR-TV (now Channel 3WTKR) and in 1961, itsigned on 95.7 WTAR-FM (nowWVKL).
The paper was among the first available online as a part of theCompuserve experiment in early 1980s where the paper and 10 others around the country transmitted text versions of stories daily toCompuserve's host computers in Ohio.[13]
Frank Batten Jr. became publisher in 1991 and expanded on digitizing the paper. In 1993The Virginian-Pilot was one of the first newspapers in the country to launch a sister website, Pilotonline.com.[14] Batten Jr. stepped down as the paper's publisher, becoming Landmark Communications' Chairman and CEO. "Dee" Carpenter became publisher in 1995, followed by Bruce Bradley in 2005, Maurice Jones in 2008, David Mele in 2012 and Patricia Richardson in 2014. The paper published a podcast in 2017.The ShotArchived November 10, 2017, at theWayback Machine was created by reporters Gary Harki and Joanne Kimberlin and dealt with the unsolved 2010 murder of Norfolk police officer Victor Decker.
AfterThe Pilot was sold to Tronc in 2018, no new publisher was named. Marisa Porto was named the newspaper's editor,[15] but she left the next year.[16] Interim General Manager Par Ridder said a search would begin for a new editor for the newsroom and a new general manager to oversee the business side of the newspaper.[16]
Kris Worrell was named by Ridder asThe Pilot's editor on July 22, 2019.[17] She had previously been the executive editor ofThe Press of Atlantic City. Worrell graduated from Kempsville High in Virginia Beach and worked previously both forThe Pilot and theDaily Press.[18]
The paper's offices are shared with its sister paper, theDaily Press and are located at 703 Mariners Row, Newport News, VA 23606.[19] It is in theCity Center at Oyster Point complex.[20] Both papers are owned by Tribune Publishing.
Beginning circa 1937, the headquarters were in Norfolk.[20] In 2020, the newspaper moved,[21] as Monument Companies bought the Norfolk complex for $9,500,000.[22] This complex became Pilot Place, an apartment complex.[23] The new headquarters in Newport News was already the offices of theDaily Press, which was the lessee.[20]
Since December 2014, thePilot's single copy prices are: $1 Daily, $2.50 Sunday/Thanksgiving Day.
On May 29, 2018,The Virginian-Pilot was purchased by Chicago-based media conglomerate Tribune Publishing, formerly known as Tronc, for a cash price of $34 million. The deal included thePilot and all of its "outstanding interests" — including its subsidiary publications, the paper's Norfolk headquarters and its printing plant in Virginia Beach.[24]
Daily Press 703 Mariners Row Newport News, VA 23606[...]The Virginian-Pilot 703 Mariners Row Newport News, VA 23606
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