Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, February 22, 1991                   TAG: 9102220192
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: B6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Short

BATTEN TO HEAD NEWSPAPER IN NORFOLK

Batten on June 1 will succeed Robert D. Benson, who will retire. The Norfolk newspapers are owned by Landmark Communications Inc., also parent of the Roanoke Times & World-News.

Batten, 32, is associate publisher and vice president of the Norfolk newspapers. He is the son of Frank Batten Sr., chairman of Landmark.

Benson, who has had a 26-year career with Landmark newspapers, including the presidency of Roanoke's Times-World Corp. in 1976 and 1977, later became president and publisher of the Greensboro, N.C., News and Record, also a Landmark property.

Batten has been associate publisher and vice president of the Norfolk newspapers since 1989. Before that he was publisher of The News-Enterprise in Elizabethtown, Ky., and a reporter in the London bureau of The Associated Press. He was a reporter and an advertising sales representative at the Roanoke Times & World-News from 1979 to 1982.

A Norfolk native, Batten graduated from Dartmouth College and earned a master's degree in business administration from the Colgate Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. - Associated Press