About the Virginian-Pilot Archives

Virginian-Pilot

Welcome to The Virginian-Pilot News Archive

The Virginian-Pilot, based in Norfolk, Va., is the hometown newspaper for Southeastern Virginia and Northeastern North Carolina. The primary market for the Pilot and its sister paper, the afternoon Ledger-Star, includes the cities of Norfolk, Virginia Beach, Chesapeake, Portsmouth and Suffolk.

Stories from the newspaper have been archived electronically since 1990 and are being made public via the Internet thanks to the Virginia News Archive project at Virginia Tech. The university updates the Pilot three to five days after each paper is published. (A portion of each day's news is available on a timely basis through the newspaper's Pilot Online site.)

The archive contains most locally written stories from the paper, but not all. You generally will NOT find:

  • Stories or columns from wire services
  • Time-sensitive information such as calendars of events or mortgage and interest rate charts
  • Stock or sports statistics
  • Marriage, divorce and anniversary listings
  • Civil suits
  • Advice columns from non-newspaper sources
  • Bridge columns
  • Recipes
  • Advertising

The archive does include all locally written stories from the news, features, sports and business staffs. You will also find:

  • Obituaries
  • Birth listings
  • Real estate transfers
  • Circuit court actions and drunken driving convictions
  • Area crime reports
  • Editorials and letters to the editor

A separate site, the Pilot Online site, also keeps limited archives of consumer-oriented information such as movie and restaurant reviews, neighborhood profiles, and current news and advertising.