Its new owner, Sinclair executive chairman David D. Smith, has pushed local TV news hard to the right. Will he do the same with newspapers — a medium he’s called “so left wing as to be meaningless dribble…so devoid of reality and serving no real purpose”?
By Joshua Benton / NiemanLab / Jan. 16, 2024
It’s a question only the bravest have dared contemplate: Is there something worse for a newspaper than being owned by Alden Global Capital?
The vulturous hedge fund has, after all, been traditionally seen as an end-stage owner. In the old days, newspaper owners existed in an ersatz great chain of being. Family-owned papers worried about being bought by McClatchy; McClatchy papers feared being scooped up by Gannett; Gannett papers recoiled at the thought of being bought by Alden Global Capital. But Alden papers — despite all the associated indignations — could at least rest easy that there was no worse owner to worry about. There’s a certain stoic grace to recognizing rock bottom.
Well, what has until now been a philosophical thought experiment is about to hit reality in Baltimore. From Lorraine Mirabella’s story in this morning’s Baltimore Sun:
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.”
For the balance of this thought-provoking article, please go here.
From Wed WaPo: Baltimore Sun staff clash with new owner: ‘Don’t know how to reason with him’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/style/media/2024/01/17/baltimore-sun-staff-meeting-david-smith-sinclair-alden/
The Union has been nothing more than a propagandist rag for the corporate monopolization of housing since Helen Copley died. It’s circulation has to be fewer than 50,000 now. The Watchtower from the Jehova’s Witness has more content than the Union.
For the record I subscribed to the Union Tribune and read it cover to cover for over 35 years until it became intolerable under the Manchester Group management. I gave it another shot when Tribune media bought it and then watched the oligopoly mobilize of the politico-real estate industrial complex that has effectively destroyed California for profit, mindless profit. U-T writer (columnist really) Michael Smolens is a perfect example of the save-your-own-skin-sellouts that bull-horned for the profit that has destroyed America’s Finest City. “Contributor” Mr. Smolens has spent over a decade and a half repeatedly advocated for developers that have kept the beleaguered the U-T afloat and subsequently enabled him to keep his job. Conveniently coordinated by John Decker at KPBS, Smolens appeared regularly and almost always unchallenged on the “KPBS Round Table” to run interference for the largest unmitigated politico-corporate real estate land grab in U.S. History. For their part truth is being obscured if not obfuscated altogether, only narratives are presented to the people and only those narratives exist in the vacuous hole left in their heads. Terms like “the housing crisis, “the housing shortage” imply that there just aren’t enough housing units that’s why people are on the street; “Build, Build, Build! Worked the same for big tobacco, and it worked the same for “toilet to tap”.
16 years of paid legislative manipulation policy has gotten us a State with a contracting population, that has a budget shortfall of $68 Billion and California cannot print money. By the way thousands of more Californians were evicted on the 5th, and will be on the 5th of next month and the following… No end in sight, and this is during a “booming economy”.
Anyone care to pontificate what the situation will be like when the economy tanks and unemployment jump to 6%, 7%, 8%?
It’s not just the intensification of the sheer numbers of unsheltered in California. The oligopoly has decimated the ancillary population, the people that work for a living that cannot live here anymore. Waitresses, teachers, nurses, surgical techs, cooks, police officers, firefighters, highway patrol officers, CalTrans workers, waste management services, city services, and now doctors, dentists, lawyers. We haven’t the significant infrastructure required to facilitate and maintain our population.
Corporate consolidation of media has robbed us of the unity of informed control, the ability to choose what candidates run in any race, regardless of party, civility, fortitude, empathy, compassion, truth, justice, and the American way of the pursuing happiness. There were 58 independent news organizations before the “bipartisan” Telecommunications Act of 1996 eliminated anti-trust protections allowing for massive consolidation.
96% of the entire global media empire is controlled by just 5 mega corporations and you can thank both parties for that. 96% of everything:
Newspapers, book publishers, magazines, local t.v. networks, national t.v. networks, internet service providers, local radio networks, national radio networks, online news sites, media websites, satellite radio networks, billboards, and satellite television, all of it, worldwide.
Though it is uncharted territory to potentially have no Union, we have had little to no Union at all anyway. The writing has been on the wall, the Union Tribune is dead, and will be no matter who owns it. The loss makes the community more reliant on independent publications like the OB Rag, La Prensa SD, and the like.
There is a massive void to fill, donate to the OB Rag, email and text links to the sensible informed activism of real journalism that are posted in the Rag everyday. Reward the free press by being willing to pay for it, otherwise it is not a free press and that is about all we really know for sure.