The Purgatory of The Virginian-Pilot

In Dante's Divine Comedy, hapless souls await their fate in Purgatory, an anteroom of anguish.

Some souls will be demoted to Inferno, or Hell. Other souls, though, will be promoted to Paradiso, or Heaven.

Dave Melee, president and publisher of The Virginian-Pilot, is the latter rather than the former. He will ascend to Paradiso in less than a month and leave the Purgatory which is now The Virginian-Pilot, a newspaper rent by extreme angst.

Some, also, will wait in Purgatory for eternity, stricken by angst because they don't know their fate. They are The Virginian-Pilot editors, reporters, photographers, designers; they have waited in Purgatory for years, never knowing if the newspaper has been sold. Meanwhile, they have seen their friends and colleagues retire, resign and quit.

Angst is a movable feast in the newspaper business. Reporters are born with angst; editors thrive on angst.

The latest episode of angst is Dave Melee's abrupt departure as president and publisher of The Pilot, which was announced yesterday.

Melee won't go far. He will become president of Home Media Solutions, a division of Dominion Enterprises, a company of digital dilettantes, in downtown Norfolk. 

(That Frank Batten Jr., owner of this vast media empire, supposedly occupies an office in the building may be an urban myth.)

Melee will ascend, so to speak, to a higher floor in a higher building, among higher-ups who think, speak and pontificate in MBA. In other words, he will join his brethren and escape the anarchists and firebrands of the news business.

He will join them, the executives, the ones with big Es. Like Executive Vice President or Executive something or other, all of which is very Executive.

The wags, me included, really aren't sure what Home Media Solutions is. Maybe it's a maid service or a plumber service specializing in clearing your clogged pipes. 

But we do know newspapers, or at least we think we do. But you know wags: they think they know everything and yet they know nothing but sound authoritative anyway. In our defense, we just want to act and sound like everyone else.

The habit of wags is to congregate in coffee shops and beer halls and discern the meaning of Melee's abrupt departure from The Pilot.

This is the message.

The captain of the Titantic has jumped ship.

In the middle of immense changes, the captain is gone. Will no one replace him?

No one has been mentioned. Nor has a national search been announced.

This is a sign, among many.

Over the past year, The Pilot – intellectually and spiritually – has been downsized and rightsized; it's employees have been downsized and right-sized.

Pages have been reduced.

Local news has diminished.

You must pay to read now.

Expenses have to be cut by 25 percent by the end of the year.

Amid the angst, the editor, Denis Finley, and Melee are featured on Cathy Lewis' HearSay on public radio.

You hear them say things like this.

“We no longer have a newspaper; we have a news organization.”

“Print readership is very, very large in this market.”

“A dollar in print becomes a dime in digital.”

“We don't want to reduce the people side of the business.”

That was early June.

In September, the bigwigs of Landmark Media Enterprise LLC and Landmark Publishing Co. announce Melee's departure as president and publisher of the The Pilot. They say nice things about him. In Oct., he becomes president of another media-related business owned by the same group and run by the same people.

Melee is rescued. The rest of you?

A new owner waits to pull you from Purgatory and send you to Hell.