A Peninsula Tale and a Commission’s Work
Captain Newport hits a reef.
by Gordon C. Morse
CNU Trible Library photo by Cnucaptain
Thanks to The New York Review of Books, we have this 1994 observation by the late Yale historian Edmund S. Morgan:
“The distinguishing mark of American politics has been the absence of irreconcilable differences between the two parties that successively dominate the national government. Each party rests on a coalition of interests so diverse and inclusive as to prevent the formulation of any program that the other party will find intolerable.”
Intolerable is avoidable, in other words. We just have to apply that peculiar American genius for maneuver and resolution. We find our way to tolerable postures. We discover ways to live with each other. We steer clear of absolutes.
Morgan cites the Civil War as one occasion when we did otherwise.
In this regard, we should consider Virginia’s “Commission to Study the History of the Uprooting of Black Communities by Public Institutions of Higher Education in the Commonwealth [the Commission].”
With its enhanced mandate and recent infusion of additional financial support, the Commission may soon gain momentum.
But where is it headed? What outcomes does it seek? It’s already talking about “repairs.” What does that mean?
It appears the Commission might have benefited from some measured aforethought — i.e., what are we getting ourselves into? – but let’s take this one step at a time.
This essay discusses the genesis of the Commission. In subsequent installments I will take up the Commission’s labors and what may come of them. It is most assuredly in everyone’s interest to moderate the Commission’s ambitions.
The Commission got birthed following the combined efforts of Norfolk public broadcaster WHRO and Pro Publica to explore a story contemporaneously reported on in detail and now more than a century old.
That story centers on property acquired in Newport News for the purpose of establishing and expanding Christopher Newport University.
In 2023, WHRO and Pro Publica produced a series of articles and published them on-line employing the latest Internet techniques of incorporating film, graphics, old photos, maps, even dramatic music. Lots of somber lower register piano. Left hand. F clef.
In that respect, it’s very impressive work. Some money got spent.
Unfortunately, it’s impressive only in that single respect. Otherwise it’s journalistically dreadful.
I say this while acknowledging that what constitutes “journalism” is ever-changing. Generally (in my lifetime, anyway) we’ve benefited from news organizations that took events in a reasonably straight-forward manner. The house burned down. The council met. The basketball team prevailed. Aunt Louise died. That sort of thing.
In contrast, today’s reporting would acknowledge the demise of Aunt Louise, but then insist that she deserved what she got. That’s the difference. It’s all coming at us with a point of view and it’s not terribly subtle.
Such was the case with the reporting of WHRO and Pro Publica in 2023 on the subject of CNU. This was not reporting in the traditional sense, but advocacy. It was highly derivative (a serious tip-of-the-hat to the Daily Press would have been appropriate) and far too much inclined to hitting (slamming, smushing, crushing) emotional buttons and playing to racial and Southern stereotypes.
Events, timelines and personalities were merrily mixed about and the authors doctored the narrative. It took a frightfully complex situation and reduced it to a cartoon. As an attempt to achieve “social justice” – that’s the clear and unmistakable goal — it fails on a threshold requirement: competence.
WHRO presently represents itself as “The next generation of local news.” You just pray that’s not true. Hampton Roads deserves better than this.
WHRO was an object of worry early-on. A couple of years ago, honorable and well-intentioned personages inhabiting the eastern regions of Virginia saw the decline of The Virginian-Pilot and the Daily Press as deeply troublesome and wished to do something about it.
Ergo, money was sought – roughly $10 million – in order to establish a local news division within the organizational structure of WHRO.
The pushback was near instant and arose from a fundamental distrust of public broadcasting generally and WHRO in particular. This did not come to me off-hand, but directly from people who feared supporting what could well become a left-leaning form of activism operating in the guise of “news reporting.”
Well, here we are.
On the surface of things, the motive to create an alternative to The Virginian-Pilot and the Daily Press was laudable. It would have served the community well to have a competent news organization dedicated to traditional, fact-based reporting. The fair and un-massaged exchange of information is vital to community health, democratic viability, the American Way, etc. and so forth.
May as well be blunt about this. We ought to be able to tell ourselves what “is” and what “ain’t.”
The two once dominant news organizations in Hampton Roads have become, in effect, “pretend newspapers,” decorated with the old, familiar mastheads, but devoid of the innards (the institutional guts) that gave the papers journalistic integrity.
The Daily Press of Newport News was family-owned by the Van Buren and Bottom families until 1986, when it was sold to the Chicago-based Tribune Company (now Tribune Publishing).
The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, likewise, was a family-owned operation under the Slover and Batten families. Their company, Landmark Communications (or Landmark Media Enterprises, as it was later known) was sold to Tribune Publishing in May 2018.
In 2021, Tribune Publishing—including both the Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot—was acquired by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund known for aggressive cost-cutting at its newspaper properties.
The transition from local, family ownership to out-of-state corporate proved compromising. To borrow a philosophic line – I don’t think I’m misapplying it in this instance – “a thing is what it is and not something else.”
In other words, both papers, by any working definition of what they once were, simply no longer exist. Once operations and newsrooms were merged, once staff numbers were diminished through layoffs and buyouts, once inexperienced, untutored people got a grip on the controls, this familiar, traditional, local form of journalism came to an end.
It’s sort of like that moment in the John Ford movie, with Liberty Valence lying in the street, and the doctor says, “Whiskey, quick.” Handed the bottle, the doctor himself takes a big slug, considers Liberty for a moment and says to the gathered crowd, “Dead.”
Here’s the other thing: Digital journalism has a vastly tighter fix on its audience. The old newspapers had a general idea of readers, but nothing like this. Modern internet-based media companies know precisely how many people read, what they read, how long they read and what they were previously reading. Nothing like that was previously possible.
Which is to say that organizations such as WHRO and Pro Publica know their fans and tailor their products accordingly. The reporters and supervisors may in fact lean left naturally, but that tends to miss the point: They have no choice. They have to feed the beast what it wants.
It is also the reason why the stories on CNU got marketed to awards-granting organizations. This is the “tell” of the new journalism. Whenever you see a reporter described as “award-winning,” you’re likely being had. There are no -– should not be –- any short-cuts to credibility.
WHRO and Pro Publica had a hot idea with this series of stories and it was cynically undertaken at the expense of Christopher Newport University and generations of people committed to the school’s success.
Now comes the Commission’s work and you should first look to its legislative members and note that the material facts of CNU’s acquisitions are unchanged in the period of their political careers.
Which is to say that if this subject is so compelling, why did none of these lawmakers ever express a concern about it?
Nonetheless, the Commission just had its funding increased by 1,111% and has been charged to consider not just CNU, but all of Virginia’s colleges and universities.
The Commission is going somewhere and that will be considered next.
Gordon C. Morse has been writing commentary and speeches in Virginia since 1983. This column his republished with permission from his Substack account Heart’s Desire.
