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The Baltimore Sun

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The Baltimore Sun
File:Baltimoresunjune162009.png
Front page of The Baltimore Sun,
June 16, 2009
TypeDaily newspaper
FormatBroadsheet
Owner(s)Tribune Company
PublisherTimothy E. Ryan
Founded1837
Headquarters501 North Calvert Street
Baltimore, Maryland 21278
United States
Circulation201,830 Daily
344,118 Sunday[1]
ISSN1930-8965
Websitebaltimoresun.com

The Baltimore Sun is the U.S. state of Maryland’s largest general circulation daily newspaper and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries.[2] The Sun was founded on May 17, 1837, by printer Arunah Shepherdson Abell and two associates. The Abell family owned the paper through 1910, when the Black family gained a controlling interest. The paper was sold in 1986 to the Times-Mirror Company of Los Angeles. The same week, the rival Baltimore News American, owned by the Hearst Corporation, announced it would fold. The Sun, like most legacy newspapers in the United States, has suffered a number of setbacks of late, including a decline in readership, a shrinking newsroom,[3] and competition from a new free daily, The Baltimore Examiner, which has since folded.[4] In 2000, the Times-Mirror company was purchased by the Tribune Company, of Chicago.

On September 19, 2005, and again on August 24, 2008, The Baltimore Sun introduced new layout designs.[5] Its circulation as of 2010 was 201,830 for the daily edition and 344,118 on Sundays. On April 29, 2009, the Tribune Company announced that it would lay off 61 of the 205 staff members in the Sun newsroom.[1]

The Baltimore Sun is part of the Baltimore Sun Media Group, which also produces the b free daily newspaper and more than 30 other Baltimore metropolitan-area community newspapers, magazines and Web sites. BSMG content reaches more than 1 million Baltimore-area readers each week and is the region's most widely read source of news.[6][dead link]

Editions

Although there is now only a morning edition, for many years there were two distinct newspapers — The Sun in the morning and The Evening Sun in the afternoon — each with its own reporting and editorial staff. The Evening Sun was first published in 1910. As part of a trend in the 1980s–1990s that saw the demise of afternoon newspapers nationwide, The Evening Sun ceased publication on September 15, 1995.

Daily

After a period of roughly a year during which the paper's owners sometimes printed a two-section product, The Baltimore Sun now has three sections every weekday: News, Sports and, alternatingly, various business and features sections. On some days, comics and such features as the horoscope and TV listings are in the back of the Sports section. After dropping the standalone business section in 2009, the Sun brought back a business section on Tuesdays and Sundays in 2010, with business pages occupying part of the news section on other days.[7] Features sections debuting in 2010 included a Saturday home section, a Thursday style section and a Monday section called "Sunrise." The sports article written by Peter Schmuck is only published on week-days.

Sunday

The Sunday Sun for many years was noted for a locally-produced rotogravure Maryland pictorial magazine section, featuring works by such acclaimed photographers as A. Aubrey Bodine. The Sunday Sun dropped the Sunday Sun magazine in 1996 and now only carries Parade magazine. A quarterly version of the Sun Magazine was resurrected in September 2010, with stories that included a comparison of young local doctors, an interview with actress Julie Bowen and a feature on the homes of a former Baltimore anchorwoman. Newsroom managers plan to add online content on a more frequent basis.

baltimoresun.com

The company introduced the Web site in September 1996. A redesign of the site was unveiled in June 2009, capping a six-month period of record online traffic. Each month from January through June, an average of 3.5 million unique visitors combined to view 36.6 million Web pages. Sun reporters and editors produce more than three dozen blogs on such subjects as technology, weather, education, politics, Baltimore crime, real estate, gardening, pets and parenting. Among the most popular are Dining@Large, which covers local restaurants, and The Schmuck Stops Here, a Baltimore-centric sports blog written by Peter Schmuck. A Baltimore Sun iPhone app was released September 14, 2010.

b

In 2008, the Baltimore Sun Media Group launched the daily paper b and the website bthesite.com to target younger and more casual readers. b is a tabloid format paper

Writers

Among journalists, editors and cartoonists of prominence who once were on the staff of the Sun papers:Richard Ben Cramer, Russell Baker, John Carroll, Turner Catledge, Price Day, Margaret Dempsey-McManus-McKay, Edmund Duffy, J. Fred Essary, Thomas Flannery, Jack Germond, Mauritz A. Hallgren, David Hobby, Gerald W. Johnson, Kevin P. Kallaugher (KAL), Frank Kent, William Manchester, H.L. Mencken, sportscaster Jim McKay, novelist Laura Lippman, columnist and correspondent Thomas O'Neill, Hamilton Owens, Drew Pearson, Phil Potter, Louis Rukeyser, David Simon, Raymond S. Tompkins, Paul W. Ward, Mark Watson [disambiguation needed], Jules Witcover, and Richard Q. Yardley. The paper has won 15 Pulitzer Prizes.

Facilities

The Baltimore Sun, North Calvert Street
Sun Park in Port Covington

The first issue of The Sun, a four-page tabloid, was printed at 21 Light Street in downtown Baltimore in the mid 1830s. A five-story structure, at the corner of Baltimore and South streets was built in 1851. The "Iron Building", as it was called, was destroyed in the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. In 1906, operations were moved to Charles and Baltimore Streets where the Sun was written, published and distributed for nearly 50 years. In 1950, the operation was moved to a larger, modern plant at Calvert and Centre streets. In 1979, ground was broken for a new addition to the Calvert Street plant to house modern pressroom facilities. The new facility commenced operations in 1981. In April 1988, at a cost of $180 million, the Company purchased 60 acres (24 ha) of land at Port Covington, Baltimore and built "Sun Park". The new building houses a satellite printing and packaging facility, as well as the distribution operation.[8] The Sun's printing facility at Sun Park has highly sophisticated computerized presses and automated insertion equipment in the packaging area. To keep pace with the speed of the presses and Automated Guided Vehicles; "intelligent" electronic forklifts deliver the newsprint to the presses.

In 1885 the Sun constructed a building for its Washington Bureau at 1317 F Street, NW.[9] The building is on the National Register.

Controversies

  • The same Olesker was forced to resign on January 4, 2006, after being accused of plagiarism. The Baltimore City Paper reported that several of his columns contained sentences or paragraphs that were extremely similar (although not identical) to material previously published in The Washington Post, The New York Times, and The Sun.[11] Several of his colleagues both in and out of the paper were highly critical of the forced resignation, taking the view that the use of previously-published boilerplate material was common newsroom practice, and Olesker's alleged plagiarism was in line with that practice.[12]
  • Between 2006 and 2007, Thomas Andrews Drake, a former National Security Administration executive, allegedly leaked classified information to Siobhan Gorman, then a national security reporter for The Sun. Drake was charged in April 2010 with 10 felony counts in relation to the leaks.[13]

The Sun (and fictional staff members) were featured in season 5 of the HBO series The Wire, which is set in Baltimore.

References

  1. ^ a b Mirabella, Lorraine; " BaltimoreSun.com, April 28, 2009
  2. ^ "(Baltimore) The Sun". Thomson Reuters. Retrieved May 28, 2008.
  3. ^ "TRIBUNE CO. ANNOUNCES PLANS TO LAYOFF 27 PERCENT OF THE BALTIMORE SUN'S NEWSROOM STAFF, INCLUDING FOUR COLUMNISTS". Poynter. May 30, 2009. Retrieved May 30, 2009.
  4. ^ Shin, Annys (October 18, 2007). "Examiner Plans Baltimore Edition". The Washington Post. Retrieved June 25, 2007.
  5. ^ Charles Apple (August 24, 2008). "Live pages from the Baltimore Sun's redesign". visualeditors.com. Retrieved October 22, 2008.
  6. ^ "(Baltimore) The Sun". The Baltimore Sun. Retrieved 2008. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  7. ^ "Baltimore Sun - The #31 Newspaper in the USA". Mondo Code. Retrieved May 28, 2008.
  8. ^ "About The Baltimore Sun". baltimoresun.com. Retrieved May 28, 2008.
  9. ^ Washington Post, Apr 9, 1903
  10. ^ "Court Favors Ehrlich on Ban", The Baltimore Sun, February 16, 2006
  11. ^ Post Store (Jan. 5, 2006). "Sun Columnist Dismissed; Attribution Issues Cited". The Washington Post. Retrieved September 14, 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  12. ^ "On Background". Baltimore City Paper. Jan. 18, 2006. Retrieved September 14, 2010. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |date= (help)
  13. ^ "Ex-NSA worker from Md. charged in classified leak case". The Baltimore Sun. April 15, 2010. Retrieved September 14, 2010.

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