Frank Batten, a man of means, a life of meaning

By Margaret Edds
Correspondent

Any history of South Hampton Roads in the second half of the 20th century surely would rank Frank Batten among an elite group of first citizens. So, author and former Landmark Communications employee Connie Sage has rendered a valuable service by recording the life story of this modest but forceful man whose business acumen and estimable values helped shape a region.

In its subtitle, the book emphasizes the achievement that probably identifies Batten to the broadest swath of Americans - his shepherding of The Weather Channel from a laughable cable experiment, a near-failure, to a $3.5 billion gold mine when it was sold in 2008.

But, for me and perhaps many others, the chief legacies of the deceased communications magnate have less to do with building a corporate empire than with other qualities identified by Sage: his openness, at a critical time in Virginia history, to racial progress; his philanthropic generosity; his commitment to spreading access to public education; and his love affair with newspapers as the voice and conscience of a community.

Built largely around more than 150 hours of interviews with Batten, who died in 2009, and access to many of his closest associates (although Sage's book notes cite only one email exchange with Batten's son and successor), the book is a sympathetic portrayal of a broadly admired man. If there is a shadow side to Batten's long career, jump-started in 1954 when - at 27 - he was named publisher of The Virginian-Pilot and the now-defunct Ledger-Dispatch, it is not to be found here.

The many accolades don't come only from those whose paychecks Batten signed. "I - and many others obviously - feel you are probably the best executive in our industry.... I know of no one who is so universally admired," wrote Kay Graham, then publisher of The Washington Post, around the time Batten's cancerous vocal cords were removed in the late 1970s. And the fact that Batten received more votes than any other candidate, including incumbents and the chairman, when he first ran for the board of directors of The Associated Press says much.

Perhaps the least flattering portions of the book are the revelation that Batten was a bit of a hellion as an adolescent, as well as a poignant admission by Jane Batten that theirs "has not been an easy marriage." Wed at just 19 to a man who was already 30, "I was too young and neither of us had an idea of what we were getting into," she said.

The nephew and surrogate son of Col. Samuel L. Slover, who built The Pilot and The Ledger into southeastern Virginia's premier newspapers, Batten was to the manner born. He could have skated through life on the largesse of his inheritance but instead chose civic engagement and entrepreneurial risk.

Two of the defining chapters in Batten's life - his involvement in the reopening of Norfolk schools after a six-month closure in 1958-59 to protest racial integration and his salvaging of The Weather Channel - have been treated extensively in two previous books: Alexander Leidholdt's "Standing Before the Shouting Mob" (University of Alabama Press, 1997) and Batten's own "The Weather Channel: The Improbable Rise of a Media Phenomenon" (Harvard Business School Press, 2002).

Sage's accounts mirror those works, while bolstering them with a few additional details plus Batten's final assessments. She recounts, for instance, that his fortitude as a still-green publisher in standing up to Virginia's dominant political forces was presaged by an incident more than a decade earlier. As a callow, 18-year-old midshipman, just after World War II ended, he fought for a black lieutenant's right to enter an officer's club in Wesermunde, Germany.

And she records Batten's regret that, even though The Pilot stood alone among major Virginia newspapers in opposing the closing of public schools, he did not earlier force The Ledger to adopt a similar editorial stance. Eventually, Batten broke his uncle's code (and his own) about non-interference in newspaper editorial policy by insisting that The Ledger accept court-ordered school desegregation.

"I wish I had changed The Ledger a lot sooner," he told Sage.

That hands-off policy was one of the surprising, and welcomed, features of the decade I spent as an editorial writer for The Virginian-Pilot. I remember the second of the three editors for whom I worked observing one day that we were operating under "some kind of weird grace." He was fairly certain that the Battens did not personally agree with several of our editorial campaigns, but no edict to stop ever came down from on high.

Batten's policy of hiring capable people and trusting them to do their jobs is but one of the exemplary business practices cited by Sage. Batten maintained his rank as one of the nation's wealthiest citizens in part by smartly sizing up business opportunities "so far down the entrepreneurial food chain that others in the industry had rejected them." He combined frugality with forward-thinking employee benefits, avoiding unionization in the deal. And he won industry accolades by stressing loyalty and ethical standards.

Casual readers may find some of the minutia about the expansion of Landmark Communications tedious. However, anecdotes detailing Batten's formative years, his sailing passion and the 11th-hour rescue of The Weather Channel from being shut down are lively fare. One point at which readers may wish the book had delved more deeply involves the decision by Batten's son and heir, Frank Jr., to offer Landmark businesses, including its newspapers, for sale in January 2008.

About 14 months before his death in September 2009, Batten addressed the proposed sale at some length.

"It's just very sad for me because it's meant more than anything else in my life," he told Sage. But he was characteristically reluctant to engage in second-guessing. "If the management is convinced of it, it's likely to be the right decision."

Barring some future unauthorized biography, that is likely to be the last word on the final chapter of a consequential and laudable life.

Margaret Edds, a retired Virginian-Pilot editorial writer, lives in Richmond. Her books include a memoir, "Finding Sara: A Daughter's Journey" (Butler, 2010) and "Free at Last: What Really Happened When Civil Rights Came to Southern Politics" (Adler & Adler, 1987).