Charles Apple

The Virginian-Pilot’s Bill Choyke and Phil Walzer — our business editor and a business reporter, respectively — are reporting:

An announcement is scheduled Thursday that the Batten family which owns Landmark Communications Inc. has hired national investment advisers to sell the Norfolk-based company, including The Virginian-Pilot.

The company, which traces its past in Norfolk to 1865, could be sold in pieces. JPMorgan Chase is advising Landmark on the sale of the Weather Channel, one of its largest properties, and Lehman Brothers is advising the company on the sale of its other media assets.

In addition, The New York Times‘ Andrew Ross Sorkin reports that the Weather Channel — Landmark’s prize property — would be the first piece to sell and could bring in more than $5 billion.

Weather Channel headquarters in Atlanta.
—

Landmark’s headquarters are on the 3rd floor of
The Virginian-Pilot’s Brambleton Ave. building
in Norfolk.
—

The Weather Channel is based in Atlanta, but Landmark’s headquarters are in downtown Norfolk — one floor up from the Pilot newsroom, in fact.

Sorkin reports:

The sale of the Weather Channel, [said people briefed on the auction], is part of a larger breakup of its parent, Landmark Communications, a privately held company controlled by the Batten family of Norfolk, Va., which also owns daily newspapers and other media properties. Landmark’s newspaper holdings include The Virginian-Pilot, The [Greensboro] News & Record and The Roanoke Times, as well as 50 other community newspapers.

…JPMorgan Chase is advising Landmark on the sale of the Weather Channel, and Lehman Brothers is advising the company on the sale of its other media assets, people briefed on the process said.

A spokesman for Landmark could not be reached.

…The breakup and sale of Landmark Communications would spell the end of a small but storied fixture in the media landscape.

…It is unclear how big the appetite will be for the company’s remaining newspaper assets, though community newspapers have fared much better than large dailies in recent years.

We’ll have more when it’s available.

In the meantime, here is today’s Pilot front in higher resolution. Click on the thumbnail, please.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 2nd, 2008 at 11:09 pm and is filed under Industry woes, Newspapers, Virginian-Pilot, VizEds Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.