On Tuesday, The Virginian-Pilot found itself embroiled in a national controversy over the recent attack on our reporters Dave Forster and Marjon Rostami after they attended a concert at the Attucks Theatre in Norfolk. We did not report the attack as a news story, and some have accused us of burying the incident for political reasons.

NORFOLK Virginian-Pilot reporter Corinne Reilly and photographer Ross Taylor have won national acclaim for their series about a military hospital in Afghanistan. On Monday, they each were awarded first place for enterprise writing and photography, respectively, in the newspaper's Slover Awards.

The Virginian-Pilot again has been named the winner of the Virginia Press Association's sweepstakes award as the best in its circulation category, and the newspaper's five-part series about the combat hospital in Kandahar, Afghanistan, took top honors for public service. The awards were presented Saturday in Roanoke at the VPA's annual meeting.

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The executive in charge of The Virginian-Pilot's online operations was appointed Tuesday as the next publisher of the newspaper.
David Mele, 41, has been general manager of Pilot Interactive since June 2008, overseeing businesses such as Pilot-Online.com, HamptonRoads.com and CareerConnection.com.
Mele will become publisher, as well as president of Pilot Media Cos., on April 16.

By Dennis Hartig, special to The Virginian-Pilot GOOD LUCK shined on me a few weeks before Christmas in 1979, when I was installed as Gene Owens’ successor as editor of the Virginia Beach Beacon.

There was no way I could have known that the new decade would turn out to be a Golden Age for newspapers, the last decade before the Internet changed all the rules.

We’ve given our websites - PilotOnline.com and HamptonRoads.com - a bit of a facelift. The biggest change is that we’ve modified the navigation at the top of our sites, hoping to help our users find what they’re looking for more easily and present our sites in a brighter, more updated style. Read all about it in this blog entry.

As I explained last week, we face unprecedented headwinds in the economy and in the newspaper industry. To stay competitive, we must reduce costs so that we can remain profitable, which allows us to bring you news - in print and online - every day.

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Janie Bryant’s coverage of Portsmouth civil and criminal courts took the top spot for beat reporting today in The Virginian-Pilot’s 50th annual Slover awards.