On Sunday, Alden Global Capital, a private equity firm with a reputation for sucking the remaining blood out of failing newspapers before offloading what's left of them, sold the Baltimore Sun to Sinclair Broadcast Group Executive Chairman David Smith, who has a reputation for using his local news assets to propagate his far-right ideology.
It wasn't a surprise when one of the paper's most notable alums, writer-producer David Simon, let loose on Twitter/X almost immediately after the news broke.
"Instead of a family with deep civic roots and a sense of noblesse oblige that allowed for an editorial product that was not first beholden to any ideological fervor, the Baltimore Sun is now owned by someone who has delivered a news product ... that begins with a hard ideological premise and then tailors all coverage and editorializing to fit," Simon wrote on an X thread that spanned more than a dozen entries while also detailing the tragic, steady decline of the American metropolitan newspaper in the internet age.
"The irony is perfect: In Baltimore, where a newsroom of 500 souls once labored to deliver a politically centrist morning and evening newspaper that gave good weight ... .to trying to get stuff right, that newspaper has been returned to local ownership so that about 60 or 70 souls can labor to deliver a single, thin edition of a beholden political organ that will not give weight ... to any view of reality that cannot achieve some advantage or gain for a fixed ideology," Simon added. "Wall Street and out-of-town newspapering has, in four decades, devoured the very ideal of an independent newspaper in Baltimore. And done so at great profit."
Simon urged local Baltimore news consumers to turn to startup digital news platform The Baltimore Banner, a nonprofit started by Democratic businessman and philanthropist Stewart Bainum Jr.
Smith, meanwhile, told the Sun, “I’m in the news business because I believe … we have an absolute responsibility to serve the public interest. I think the paper can be hugely profitable and successful and serve a greater public interest over time. We have one job, to tell the truth, present the facts, period. That’s our job.”
Smith held a meeting with Sun staffers on Tuesday. By the social internet sounds of it, not all editorial workers were encouraged.
“Smith repeatedly talked about increasing profits — at one point telling reporters to “go make me some money” — and said reporters need to do a better job giving the public what they want.”January 17, 2024
As eloquently showcased by this still poignant 2018 video compilation, produced by Deadspin, Smith has deftly used Sinclair's local news platform to push his ideological agenda.
Meanwhile, Simon, 63, worked on the Sun city desk from 1982-1995, writing during the latter part of that span the book that changed his career trajectory, Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, after shadowing the Baltimore Police Department all throughout 1988.
The book, of course, was adapted into one of the first broadcast network procedurals by Barry Levinson. And Simon later took his TV production learnings to HBO to create seminal crime drama The Wire.
In the end, there are no great cities without great news organizations and absent an entity that truly covers its region independently and without ideological can't, corruption and grift will become unceasing. Subscribe to the @BaltimoreBanner. It's the last, best hope.January 16, 2024
