Smith Purchase of The Sun is a Complete Bombshell
The Baltimore Sun has local ownership for the first time since 1986.
The Baltimore Sun, the largest newspaper in Maryland, has been acquired in a private deal by David D. Smith, executive chairman of Hunt Valley-based television station owner Sinclair Inc.
Smith said Monday that he acquired Baltimore Sun Media on Friday from investment firm Alden Global Capital, marking the first time in nearly four decades that The Sun will be in the hands of a local owner.
Smith decided to personally buy the newspaper, along with the Capital Gazette papers in Annapolis, Carroll County Times, Towson Times and several other Baltimore-area weeklies and magazines, because of the publications’ focus on local news in the Baltimore area.
“I’m in the news business because I believe … we have an absolute responsibility to serve the public interest,” Smith said in an interview. “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.”
This puts The Baltimore Sun back under local ownership for the first time since the paper was sold to the Times-Mirror Company in 1986.
It may also bring editorial balance back to Baltimore for the first time since that same week in 1986, when The News-American folded.
If you assume that David Smith will bring the same editorial page balance to The Sun that Sinclair has, that means that The Sun will have a Republican-leaning bias in its editorial pages, as compared to the radically left-wing editorial bias of The Baltimore Banner.
As is to be expected in times like this, the same voices that have demanded local ownership of The Sun for decades are now rending their garments with cries of “Not THAT Local Ownership!”
Realistically, NOBODY knows what it means that Smith has purchased the paper from Alden Capital. In the short term, it may not mean much:
For now, he said he plans to retain the service agreements that Alden had in place with Tribune Publishing for newspaper design, human resources, accounting and other backroom functions. At some point, he said he would discontinue those agreements and the newspaper group would operate as a stand-alone business.
But if The Sun can establish some political balance in the Baltimore-area news market, this may ultimately be a game changer for local media. For now, let’s wait and see what comes next.