Virginian Pilot For Sale (Death Throes of an Industry)

A friend of mine died recently.

He wasn’t that old.

He had been hospitalized for months but the doctors gave his family hope that he would recover. And then one day I got a call from his wife; he had died suddenly. It was not totally unexpected, but it was still a shock.

So when I saw the headline in the Virginian Pilot that Landmark Communications, the Virginian Pilot’s parent company, had hired two investment firms to see if they could sell the company, it was not a total surprise. Like the death of my friend, the timing of the inevitable announcement is the surprise.

But after the first moment, the rationale becomes obvious.

The newspaper business has become totally dysfunctional. As in most cities, the Virginian Pilot is the only paper in town. The paper’s monopoly position as an advertizing medium protects it somewhat from the effects of its other business practices. After all, where are the car dealers, furniture stores, appliance stores and want-ad buyers going to go?

But the other part of the newspaper business is the filler that surrounds the advertisements: the so-called “news.” That part of the product has severe problems. It is produced by people who have some serious issues. For one thing, they hold their customers in sincere contempt, dumbing down the product, insulting their intelligence, and disparaging their beliefs and morals. All the while providing a product that is so riddled with errors and so many quality control problems that if it were not for the First Amendment, there would be a “newspaper lemon law.”

The Batten family, owners of Landmark, has become fabulously wealthy. And wealthy families, if they want to stay that way, know when to hold them and know when to fold them. They have several successful properties including the Weather Channel as well as the Virginian Pilot, and see that the peak of the market has arrived.

For the Virginian Pilot, the peak has passed, there is no end in sight, and no fixing a hopelessly defective business model. More and more their readers are finding the real news in the Internet. The culture of Olympian Liberalism is so pervasive that it cannot be changed without firing the entire staff. So they’re putting some lipstick on this pig and selling out while there is still some value to the franchise.

Who will buy this property? The rest of the drive-by-media conglomerates are looking at the same bleak future. The best bet is for wealthy dilettante to come along and use the paper as his personal plaything.

I feel sorry for the production people. But for those who are responsible for the actual output, not so much.

As the mafia hit man said to his victim, “nothing personal, it’s business.”