The Runback: Wait and See
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News and Politics
Smith Purchase of The Sun is a Complete Bombshell: The Baltimore Sun has local ownership for the first time since 1986.
January 2024 Maryland U.S. Senate Power Rankings: We skipped a month because nothing is happening. Some very interesting things have, in fact, happened since.
Failed Board of Elections Appointee Suggests Boards of Election Should Be Elected: If Newton thinks that elections are fraudulent and rigged, why does he believe seemingly every position in government should be elected?
Maryland GOP Financial Situation is Bleak: Finances under Nicole Harris's Chairmanship are so bad that the Maryland Republican Party trails the Maryland Libertarian Party in cash
Shameless Plugs
The Monday Thought
Shortly after the news broke that the Baltimore Sun had been sold to Sinclair Broadcasting President David Smith, I wrote about how the news was a bombshell to the news community and to the state political environment. I also wrote:
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.
What’s come next, in the short term, has been both enlightening and alarming.
The most hilarious thing about the sale so far has come from Baltimore Sun reporters leaking information to The Baltimore Banner. It hardly assuages concern about bias in the media when the liberal reporters one paper leak to the even more far-left daily news organ in town.
With all of that being said, what the Banner is reporting, if it can be trusted, is alarming:
In a tense, three-hour meeting with staff Tuesday afternoon, new Baltimore Sun owner David Smith told employees he has only read the paper four times in the past few months, insulted the quality of their journalism and encouraged them to emulate a TV station owned by his broadcasting company…..
…Smith seemed to try and pit reporters against each other, asking them to rank who was the best in the newsroom. Several times throughout the meeting, he said he has “no idea what you do.”
….Smith told Sun employees they were “in the poll business” now, and that they could expect to conduct polls every day. He said they would ask readers on the front page of the newspaper to go online and participate in the polling.
None of that is particularly heartening. Trying to tell print media to act more like broadcasting media shows a basic misunderstanding of the medium.
Pitting employees against each other and admitting that you have no idea what they do shows somebody with questionable managerial skills and questionable judgment, especially after doling out as much money as he did for the product.
And pushing polls like the meaningless ones Fox 45 does solely for the sake of driving up social media and website hits is beyond pointless and shows a value being placed on nonrepresentative data that means absolutely nothing.
With all that being said, Smith’s co-owner Armstrong Williams has said that the paper will end the endorsement of political candidates and will add new voices to the editorial page to bring ideological diversity to the much-maligned editorial page.
So some of that is good. A lot of that is alarming. But anybody who can tell you today what the paper will look like in a week, a month, or a year, doesn’t know what they are talking about.
Before burying the Sun, Smith and Sinclair haters would be wise to take a wait-and-see approach with the paper. While Smith’s first impression was not great, actions will speak louder than words with his administration of the paper.