Sandy Rowe of the Virginian-Pilot/Ledger-Star
This article describes the life and career of Sandy Rowe '70. This and other articles may be found in the University Archives.
Citation for this article is: Stutts, Marcia. "Sandy Rowe of the Virginian-Pilot/Ledger-Star," ECU Report, Winter 1992, Volume 23, No. 2.
When she was writing features at the Virginian-Pilot , Sandy Rowe '70 would have been hard pressed to come up with a story better than her own -- the small town editor's daughter who rose through the ranks to lead one of the South's largest daily newspapers.
Today Rowe is Executive Editor and Vice President of the Norfolk Virginian-Pilot/Ledger-Star, a post she has held for five of her 20 years with the paper. Prior to being named executive editor, Rowe was managing editor of both papers.Under her leadership, the paper has enjoyed a period of growth and success, including a Pulitzer Prize in 1985.
As an undergraduate at East Carolina University, Rowe wasn't thinking about a future as a newspaper editor, or any other career, for that matter.
"Even though my father was a newspaper man and a great influence on my life, I was the standard late '60s female college student," Rowe said."In other words, I had not thought seriously about careers."
"I knew I would work," she said, "and I guess I thought I might work at a paper.But I didn't think in terms of wanting to be editor of the best newspaper in Virginia. To me, it was employment.
"I was really right on the cusp -- right at the end of the dark ages.But I never felt held back in terms of opportunity, and I never felt I had to work harder to get ahead because I am a woman," Rowe said.
Sandra Mims Rowe was born in Charlotte, but grew up in Harrisonburg, Va., where her father, D. Lathan Mims, was editor of the Harrisonburg Daily News Record.
She attended East Carolina University from 1966 to 1970 and earned a bachelor of arts degree with a major in English and political science.During her college days, Rowe worked two years on a campus newspaper, the Fountainhead, then moved to the school yearbook, the Buccaneer , where she was editor in her junior and senior years.
She was attracted to East Carolina for its liberal arts program and because it was a coed institution. But finances also played a role in her choice, she said.
"My parents had three of us in college," Rowe said. "I knew I had to go to a state-supported school. At that time,the only coed state school in Virginia was William and Mary. My brother and sister were both at William and Mary, and I fancied myself the rebel of the family."
Rowe recalls that her college years paralleled a time of great change for East Carolina.
"While I was there, we went from a college to a university," she said. "One of my best friends was Leo Jenkins' daughter, Suzanne.At the Fountainhead we were very involved with a fight for respectability that I think everyone east of Raleigh has had to fight for. I did not realize until I got to ECU how haughty the folks in Raleigh and west could be."
After graduation Rowe returned to Virginia to help her father, who was working on a political campaign for U.S. Senator Harry F. Byrd Jr. During that time she met a law student, Gerard Rowe, whom she later married.When Gerard got a job in Norfolk, Sandy Mims moved to the Hampton Roads area and began looking for a job.
While she didn't set out to find work in news, Rowe landed right back in the business. "I was hired by WNOR -- to do news," she said. "And I was awful, just awful, on the radio.I knew I had to get another job before they found me out."
Rowe may have thought the airways were not her element, but the job did have a positive side. "It got me back into Virginia and into news. I started to learn names, faces and issues that were shaping news in Virginia," she said.
In March 1971, Rowe was offered a job as an editorial assistant, typing television listings at the Ledger, Norfolk's afternoon paper.
"I'd never had a typing course, so I lied and told them I could type," she said. "That was back in the days when, if you had a college degree and showed an interest in writing -- if you were a warm body and there was a reporting opening in the right place -- they'd offer you a job. And the right place then was the women's department. After a couple of months they came to me and asked if I wanted to be a reporter."
Rowe was promoted to assistant city editor within four years, and in 1976 became the founding editor of the Daily Break, the Ledger-Star leisure and entertainment section.After 18 months with the Daily Break , she was named assistant managing editor of the Ledger-Star. When the staffs of the morning and afternoon papers merged in 1982, Rowe was named managing editor of both. She became executive editor in 1984, and was named vice president in 1986.
Rowe said her tenure as executive editor has coincided with a time of great change in the newspaper industry.
"When I came into the business, newsrooms were very isolated," she said. "We didn't worry about keeping readers. It was almost as if God had chosen us to convey important information. The type of marketing and business issues that creep into newsrooms now just weren't on our scope.
"You got stories and you put them in the paper.You didn't worry as much about presentation, about how it looked," Rowe said."It was as if the newspaper people, even at the top, did not have to know the things other people in business had to know.
"That has completely changed," she said."We are much more concerned now about reflecting our communities -- demographically, culturally and any other way."
But one thing hasn't changed, Rowe said."You still have to be able to hold public officials' feet to the fire and do the kind of hard-hitting reporting that serves the reader."
Rowe's leadership has helped bring significant change to the Norfolk papers, according to former managing editor James Raper.
"She was the right person at the right time.There's no question about that," Raper said."She has been the guiding force for over a decade at the Norfolk newspapers."
Raper describes Rowe as "a dynamic leader, very smart in a business way as well as journalistic."
"At the basis of her talent is the fact that she is a good newswoman. She's been a copy person and a reporter; she's done all the grunt jobs. The fact that she knows the business and knows people so well has made her the ideal choice for an ever-evolving newspaper," he said.
For the next decade, Rowe predicts greater change in the newspaper business than she has seen thus far.
"It's a very different situation now -- to continue to improve with no growth and with a flat or decreasing budget," she said. "Anybody ought to be able to make something better if it's growing.But this is a much greater challenge. Under those circumstances, how do you keep giving readers a paper that is better than the one you delivered to them a year ago?"
Rowe lives in Norfolk with her husband, Gerard, and their daughters, Mims, 17, and Sarah, 12.
Although she returned to Virginia after college, Rowe and her newspaper both have a stake in North Carolina where the Pilot serves readers in northeastern counties.
"That part of North Carolina, in terms of newspapers, we own," she said. "I don't have any numbers, but I know from experience that a lot of people in the part of eastern North Carolina that we cover have come right out of East Carolina and have strong ties to the school."
Even before the medical school was a reality, Rose said, ECU's schools of Education and Music "had outstanding reputations and had a great influence in the East, particularly in the public schools," she said.
Rowe said she has observed, in recent years, the growing influence the university exerts in terms of medicine, economics, and coastal and environmental issues.
"I often meet people from eastern North Carolina who say they went to ECU," she added."Many people from that area have benefited from the university, in a direct or indirect way. It is, after all, the largest institution in that part of the state."
I've watched with pride as the university has grown," Rowe said.
