Gunpowder Chronicle posted on November 14, 2008 11:45 AM | Rating:
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The Baltimore Sun -- also known as the Patapsco Pravda, the O'Malley Gazette, and the Calvert Street Communist Party Newsletter -- is getting set for even more layoffs in 2008. According to the Baltimore Business Journal, the Baltimore-Washington Newspaper Guild is expecting more job cuts within days, as the Sun continues to struggle as part of the Tribune Company. This follows the elimination of 100 positions in August (some through buyouts), and a change in the paper's layout to cut costs.
I have been a long-time critic of the Baltimore Sun, and until they learn to separate "news" from "editorial" and get some better talent on both accounts, I will continue to be a critic. But the decline of Central Maryland's only daily newspaper does not bode well for the citizens in that area. While the Baltimore Examiner is picking up steam in its reporting, it doesn't cover a lot in-depth,and certainly does not do any sizeable investigative reporting. And we cannot expect the Washington Post to pick up the slack and cover anything more than the Washington Suburbs.
The Baltimore Metropolitan area faces major challenges and needs serious, thoughtful news coverage. At one time in my life, Baltimore was a town with three newspapers: the News American, the Evening Sun, and The Sun. It's now down to one paper (and a weak one at that) that doesn't even have serious business coverage any longer. That paper has been forced to reach out to different television stations over the years as "media partners", and despite a couple of top-notch investigative reports (the Dixon probe, the ground-rent mess) it has failed to deliver on qualitative investigations of O'Guvnah and many of cronies down in Soddom on the Severn.
While I routinely mock the "mainstream media", the fact is, America needs a strong and vibrant free press that fulfills its job of "bring light to all". Instead, we must suffer through a press that long ago abandoned -- of its own volition -- any notion of objectivity or truth in favor of Pulitzers, ratings, and gotchas. I am not one who thinks that bloggers can step into the void to provide the kind of reporting that full-time reporters interested in telling the story can provide.
The Sun's problems are largely of their own making, but their failure will ultimately be our loss.