In 1954, the 27-year-old Mr. Batten was appointed publisher of the now-defunct Norfolk Ledger-Dispatch and The Virginian-Pilot. The company consisted of the two newspapers and a radio and TV station.
In the late 1950s, when Norfolk closed its schools rather than integrate them, Mr. Batten and other community leaders ran a full-page newspaper advertisement urging city officials to reopen them. Virginian-Pilot editor Lenoir Chambers won a Pulitzer Prize in 1960 for a series of editorials on the situation.
Meanwhile, Norfolk Newspapers Inc. became Landmark Communications Inc. in 1967, and Mr. Batten became chairman. He turned over that position to his son, Frank Batten Jr., in 1998.
Landmark now owns three metro daily newspapers - The Virginian-Pilot, the News & Record in Greensboro, N.C., and The Roanoke Times - plus more than 50 smaller community papers, including the Carroll County Times in Westminster.
ARMY ARCHERD, 87
Hollywood columnist for Variety
Army Archerd, whose breezy column for the entertainment trade publication Daily Variety kept tabs on various Hollywood doings for more than a half-century, died Tuesday in Los Angeles of mesothelioma, a cancer of the lungs strongly tied to asbestos exposure. His wife said the cancer was the result of his time spent in shipyards while serving in the Navy during World War II.
Over the years, Mr. Archerd won praise from the Hollywood establishment for always checking the accuracy of his news tips before printing them. He had an extensive phone directory of much-guarded private numbers that he would use to call movie stars and studio bosses directly to ferret out which rumors were true and which were not.
His biggest scoop came in 1985 when he was first to report that veteran leading man Rock Hudson had AIDS. It was the first time a major Hollywood star was disclosed to be an AIDS victim, and it helped break down some of the secrecy surrounding the disease.
Mr. Archerd - born Armand Archerd in New York in 1922 - also broke the story that Julia Roberts had jilted fiance Keifer Sutherland in 1991 and that longtime bachelor Warren Beatty had married Annette Bening in 1992. His source for the Beatty-Bening story was Mr. Beatty himself.
For more than 50 years, Mr. Archerd also served as the greeter-interviewer at the Academy Awards. Acting nominees and other celebrities were conducted to a platform alongside the red carpet for a brief chat with Archerd that was heard by the thousands of fans gathered outside the theater.
