news-record.com

In 1964, when Frank Batten Sr. added the Greensboro Daily News and the Greensboro Record to his fledgling media chain, he made it a point to learn this community.

So the chairman of what became the Landmark Communications Inc., based in Norfolk, Va., rented an apartment in Greensboro and lived there for nearly a month. He spent that time learning the community and soothing the concerns of local leaders that the changeover from local ownership wouldn't alter the newspapers' priorities.

It was typical of the man who built and grew the parent company of what is today the News & Record. Newspapers, as he saw them, belonged to their communities, first and foremost. And he wouldn't run any of his on whims or assumptions.

Batten, who led Landmark as its chairman for 31 years, died Thursday morning at the age of 82. He amassed great wealth and fame but remained comfortably modest. He preferred to drive Buicks, re-soled his shoes and ate in the employee cafeteria.

He was a smart, inventive man with a pioneering spirit and an unwavering belief in doing what was right. Thus, as publisher of the Virginian-Pilot, he stood firmly in support of school desegregation in 1958 when no other newspaper in that state would. After Gov. Lindsay Almond Jr. closed six secondary schools in Norfolk rather than admit black students, the Pilot staunchly opposed the move in a series of forceful editorials that ultimately won a Pulitzer Prize.

Batten also had a keen eye for good ideas, even when almost no one else saw the wisdom in them. Most famously, he took a chance in 1982 on an odd notion called The Weather Channel. The rest, as they say, is history. The iconic cable channel became Landmark's most profitable property and was sold in 2008 for a reported $3.5 billion.

He believed that "newspapers live entirely on the bounty of the public" and therefore should give back to their communities. Through the Landmark Foundation the Batten family has channeled more than $3.3 million into a variety of community causes in Greensboro over the last decade, including the arts, United Way and education.

At the behest of local leaders, he kept the newspaper's offices in the center city to help a struggling downtown.

He gave the editors and publishers in Greensboro a set of guiding principles, then let them do their jobs.

For all of his success in other media, often well ahead of his time, we'll always think of him as a newspaper guy.

A good newspaper, he believed, does what is right and honorable and in the best interests of its community.