Does Anyone Care about The Sun?

April 5, 2021 Michael Olesker

The Baltimore Sun's former headquarters in South Baltimore's Port Covington neighborhood. (File photo)

In its ongoing effort to save The Baltimore Sun from the clutches of a rapacious venture capital outfit known as Alden Global Capital, the newspaper’s union held a rally outside City Hall on Saturday, Apr. 3.

The next morning, the paper carried its account of the emotional call to arms, wrapping it up in three full paragraphs, back on page 4 of its main news section.

This is like a drowning person, about to be swept away, whispering pitifully for someone along a distant shoreline to please pay some attention and come to the rescue.

According to The Sun’s own story, there were “about 50 to 75 current and former Baltimore Sun … employees and community activists gathered” at War Memorial Plaza in the shadow of City Hall.

Such a modest gathering from a newsroom that once numbered more than 400 people but has already been reduced to fewer than 100 over the past decade – and now braces for the possible sale to Alden, which has already purchased newspapers across the country and ruthlessly slashed every one of these newsrooms to skeletal outline.

Such a modest gathering, which was open to anyone concerned about the future of what was once one of America’s great newspapers.

And such piddling Sun coverage of its own plight, though, to be fair, if you anticipated dramatic Saturday evening TV news coverage of the rally, you were even more disappointed. There was nothing at all.

WBAL was too busy with a golf tournament for any local news, WJZ was too busy with college basketball, and WMAR no longer bothers with evening weekend news.

And so, as The Sun struggles for its very survival, we’re left asking a simple question.

Does anyone care?

The paper’s print circulation, once roughly a quarter-million (for the morning paper, and roughly the same for its now-deceased evening edition) has now reportedly fallen well under 100,000 — though management keeps those figures as secret as possible, out of sheer embarrassment, plus a need to hold onto advertisers who don’t want to be hollering into the void.

Does anyone care?

Stewart Bainum Jr. does. In February, the chairman of the Choice Hotel chain offered to buy The Sun and run it as a non-profit. But what looked like a deal with the Chicago Tribune chain – owners of The Sun and a bunch of other struggling papers – seemed to fall apart within weeks.

So Bainum then offered to buy the entire Tribune chain for $650 million, which is $20 million more than Alden’s bid.

At this moment, the Tribune’s board is said to be mulling over these offers, while federal regulators take their own look at the ongoing negotiations.

Does anyone care?

Yes, of course. Those whose millions are at stake obviously care. Those who work at these newspapers care deeply. Those who have held on during the past, stormy decade at The Sun have performed journalistic miracles with a ruinously depleted staff.

The real question is whether readers care about any of this – and they should.

Newspapers are the most accurate reflection of the life of a community as we’ve ever had. They tell us who we are. They report our daily triumphs, and our struggles. They give us our identity as a people – especially, as a people with common interests, and a common need for working things out.

In a struggling metro area like Baltimore’s, this becomes more important than ever – especially in a time of pandemic when so many of us already feel so isolated and so alone and so cut off from the old familiarities.

There should have been thousands at Saturday’s rally – and front page coverage of it in Sunday’s paper.

A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books. His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” was reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.