A brief history of my alma mater:
When the Abell family sold the Baltimore Sun to an out-of-town newspaper chain, we fretted, but were told that Times Mirror was a good chain, not like Gannett or whatever. We would be fine.
When the good chain brought in an out-of-town...
editors and publisher for whom the Baltimore Sun was no longer a vehicle to fully cover a distinct metro region, but rather a waystation in which they might sniff up a Pulitzer or two and then depart for higher positions in the newspaper chain, I took the third buyout offered...
...but hoped that the future wasn't as bleak as it seemed. When the good out-of-town newspaper chain was swallowed whole by the bad out-of-town newspaper chain and the buyouts multipled and became layoffs, there was little left to say...
....when the bad newspaper chain was driven into bankruptcy by the Wall Street shitheels and predators who could profit even as they were devouring the newsroom, there were fewer people to say anything or remember what a locally run, fully staffed newspaper was....
...and when the shards of the broken, out-of-town newspaper chain were snatched up as emaciated properties to be bled for their very last dime, only the masthead and a handful of journalists remained. And now, the hollow shell of once honorable grey lady has been again returned..
...to local ownership. But 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. 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. 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.
For Baltimoreans, the only hope is that the nascent @BaltimoreBanner -- an experiment in digital, independent, non-profit newspapering can generate sufficient revenue to begin staffing not only a city desk and some feature and sports coverage, but to begin adding county bureaus..
@BaltimoreBanner ...state coverage and ultimately delivering the product that was butchered by the captains who led their entire industry to Wall Street and then the grave. If you live anywhere from Howard to Harford County, or anywhere between Westminster and Annapolis, you should contribute...
@BaltimoreBanner ...a few dollars each month on behalf of an experiment that offers both professional journalism and local ownership and pray like hell that it succeeds and grows into a civic asset of a kind that an entire generation, maybe two, of Maryland citizens have not experienced.
@BaltimoreBanner 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.
ideological *cant*. In the old days, no one had to rely on a some half-educated autocorrect mechanism. Great newspapers had copydesks full of cranky, wizened troglodytes who saved reporters from themselves at a rate of three to four deadlines a night.
@geofffox ...no distro costs at all. Instead, every subscription -- even at half what newspapers once charged to throw trees on doorsteps -- is now raw profit, or it is IF the newspaper has a product meaningful enough to charge readers. That is an inverse of the earlier model...
@geofffox ...when it cost the newspaper money with every subscription and the ad dollars were the Holy Grail. It's such a reversal that the entire industry, and every fuckfailing CEO in it missed the future because they couldn't imagine subscriptions delivering revenue, so...
@geofffox ...instead of investing in an editorial product that people would pay for online, they cut their newsrooms and news hole and they gave the product away. Insanely. And now it is a long road back to quality journalism.
@JackBWuzHere @ivylander @BrianKamoie ...put out a product capable of driving up circulation, ad rates will not approach previous heights. Advertisers realize that an internet search is a much more directed and targeted interaction by consumers. The arrival of Craig's List single-handedly ended classified ads.
@JackBWuzHere @ivylander @BrianKamoie It's time to admit you don't use the internet or know how it works, eh?
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