On the media’s “liberal bias”
October 13, 2008
When I wrote a series of articles covering the Baltimore Sun’s staff and budget cuts this summer, I received a handful of e-mails from readers who said they thought the “Sunpaper” had already gone downhill because it had a liberal bias and wasn’t fully reporting both sides of the story anyway.
But an article on the Project for the Excellence of Journalism’s Web site Friday pointed out that the perceived liberal bias of the media is only a recent phenomenon.
“The criticism has not always come from the political right,” the article notes. “During the Vietnam War, Presidents Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon alike condemned the press for what they saw as undermining of their war efforts. Bill Clinton’s relationship with the press, never good, soured further during the scandal over Monica Lewinsky, and variously included complaints about both liberalism and a right-wing media machine.”
This week The Sun has run Associated Press articles titled, “Alaska lawmakers meet secretly on Palin ethics report” (Oct. 10), “VP candidate Sarah Palin wrongly suggests that Congress has imposed ban on US oil exports” (Oct. 9), “Cindy McCain accuses Obama of ‘dirtiest campaign’ in history, raps him on troop funding vote” (Oct.9) and “Palin takes questions from reporters after weeks of limited contact with the news media” (Oct. 7).
Leaving alone the fact that these are all AP stories and not written by The Sun staff, do you think Baltimore’s biggest daily newspaper has a liberal slant? Or is it just running what the other papers are to stay competitive?
LIZ FARMER, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentThe Sun, WJZ buddy up
September 25, 2008
The Baltimore Sun certainly does get around. In the last six years it’s made three content- or staff-sharing deals with two local stations (twice with ABC affiliate WMAR-TV and once with NBC affiliate WBAL-TV and radio) and Tuesday announced yet another deal — this time with CBS affiliate WJZ –TV.
(The Sun is just one local news station short of hitting for the cycle…has someone notified the Fox affiliate WBFF-TV to stand by?)
Touted as a “content-sharing partnership,” The Sun will air WJZ’s local news videos and the two outlets will share story leads and partner on major journalistic projects, according to a station press release.
The Sun’s past collaborations with television stations have included journalists being featured or interviewed on WMAR’s evening news, and WBAL-TV’s chief meteorologist, Tom Tasselmyer, on the back page of the Maryland section and answering weather questions on The Sun’s Web site.
According to the release, WJZ’s sales team will be responsible for selling advertising inventory within WJZ video content on baltimoresun.com, and the station’s regional news coverage will include stories provided by The Sun’s four county bureaus, and WJZ will promote the newspaper’s top stories in its newscasts.
Content sharing between the organizations is expected to begin by the end of the month, and WJZ news video is expected to be available at The Sun’s Web site by mid-October.
Tim Franklin, editor and senior vice president of The Sun, said in the release that the move benefits readers because combining the two outlets’ resources provides “an even more comprehensive news report.”
But are some news readers concerned that “combining resources” really means that the same news will be rehashed on both outlets, effectively reducing the variety of news reported? What do you think?
LIZ FARMER, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentSuing the boss
September 22, 2008
Once again, it’s pop quiz time! Who said the following in 1976:
“Grave dancing is an art that has many potential benefits. But one must be careful while prancing around not to fall into the open pit and join the cadaver.”
If you guessed Tribune Co. CEO Sam Zell, you have a very good memory – or you may be one of the six current or former Los Angeles Times staffers who filed a federal class action lawsuit against Zell and Tribune last week in California.
Zell’s quote serves as a prologue for the 64-page lawsuit stemming from his buyout last year of Tribune that more than tripled the company’s debt to nearly $13 billion, now shouldered by the company’s 18,000 employees. The lawsuit seeks to recover money lost from the employee stock-option plan, which Zell used to make the deal, as well as removal of Zell and other members of Tribune’s board of directors.
(Tribune Co. is the owner of The Baltimore Sun, whose recent layoffs, budget cuts and redesign under new management have been adeptly chronicled by my colleague, Liz Farmer.)
Zell has already called the lawsuit “frivolous” and “unfounded,” and much of it recaps the documented changes Tribune and its subsidiaries have undergone since he purchased it.
But, as Richard Siklos of Fortune magazine writes: “the notion that these might constitute actionable wrongs is fresh, as is the idea that Zell is a villain for wildly overpaying for the company and saddling it with an additional $8.3 billion in debt.”
So what do you think? Is the lawsuit a legitimate employee beef? Or simply sour grapes?
DANNY JACOBS, Legal Affairs Writer
Sphere: Related ContentThe difficult marriage of newspapers and online ads
September 10, 2008
A news release this week from the Baltimore Sun Media Group announced a record number of page views last month on both its baltimoresun.com and baltimore.metromix.com Web sites compared to a year earlier.
The number of page views on baltimoresun.com increased by 27 percent to 35.2 million in August, and the number of unique visitors increased by more than half to 3.8 million, compared to 2.5 million in August 2007. Metromix reported an increase of 63 percent, notching 1 million hits this August. The release attributes the increase to the Summer Olympics and the paper’s Michael Phelps coverage and to the growing popularity of the site’s blogs.
The shift also makes sense in light of the paper’s shift toward condensing its print version, which I reported on this summer in a series of stories. From a journalist’s perspective it’s nice to see that while people are shying away from subscribing to newspapers they are still going to us in some form to stay informed.
Sphere: Related ContentNew look for The Baltimore Sun
August 25, 2008
Seeing as I’ve written about The Sun’s buyouts, layoffs, redesign and general overhaul of the newspaper as we knew it, I’ve nominated myself to give the official low down of the redesigned paper, which debuted Sunday. (In case you haven’t heard by now, the paper has consolidated its business, local, national and international news into the “A” section, has another devoted to features and its third section covers sports.)
It’s all about semantics: The Sun is now officially The “Baltimore” Sun and has changed its masthead accordingly. I suppose this is to emphasize its renewed focus on local coverage and not meant to be an insinuation that people around here don’t know where The Sun — oops, I mean The Baltimore Sun — is published. The features section, which will focus on a certain theme each day of the week, is also renamed the “you” section. I’m flattered.
The Sun. We know drama: The sports section has a neat feature where columnists face off on an issue, kind of like ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption,” but for the written word. Monday’s argument is over the Ravens’ quarterback debate. The paper has also placed some eye-catching photos above its masthead to liven up its front page, which grabs readers’ attention and gives them an idea of what’s inside.
The celebrity treatment: Instead of the gritty old black-and-white headshots that used to accompany most columns, writers are getting full color torso shots or head-to-toe photos of themselves alongside their copy. Maybe it’ll get better as time goes on, but for now the photos look a little awkward with these guys just standing there, hands in pockets, trying to look relaxed. I don’t know about any other journalists, but if I liked being in the spotlight, I’d have gone into broadcasting. Is this something the readers want?
Less is more? That’s the biggest question here. The Baltimore Sun has put as much positive spin as it can on the fact that it’s cutting its content, but are you satisfied with the level of coverage? Or does the new design leave you feeling like you need to go to another source to really catch up on the day’s news?
LIZ FARMER, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentBaltimore has Olympic fever
August 14, 2008
According to an article in the Baltimore Sun today, having Maryland residents Katie Hoff and Michael Phelps in the thick of the medal race in Beijing has put droves of Baltimoreans in front of the tube.
The article references Nielsen ratings of Olympic viewership that put Baltimore as the top market with a quarter (25.2 share), or 275,000 households, have been watching the primetime games via the NBC affiliate WBAL-TV Channel 11.
All of that TV viewership has no doubt leaked over to the worldwide web, where NBC and its affiliates are offering up a host of viewing options.
For companies and other entities worried about loss of productivity and bandwidth crunch, there is Annapolis-based eTelemetry. The company’s Metron 2.0 technology blocks and filters Web sites and also lets the boss know who’s doing what and what sites the employees have been going to.
Howard County, which has received a lot of attention over the whole four-day work week thing, uses Metron in an apparent bid to make sure those days worked don’t include watching the women’s beach volleyball team run roughshod over the competition.
Do companies need to rein in online Olympic fever? Or, as with many places, should they chock it up to a passing morale booster like the bracketology of March Madness time or the armchair coaches tweaking their fantasy football roster?
BEN MOOK, Assistant Business Editor
Sphere: Related ContentMayor shows off sarcasm at fashion week announcement
August 7, 2008
In June, Sun columnist Laura Vozella took aim at Mayor Sheila Dixon for a little shopping spree she took with her former flame, developer Ronald Lipscomb.
As the details of their affair emerged, Vozella chronicled their high-end shopping habits through documents obtained by the newspaper:
In Chicago four years ago, in the space of one day and three Michigan Avenue blocks, Dixon and Lipscomb dropped more than $7,000 at Armani, Saks Fifth Avenue, Coach and Niketown.
Dixon was the bigger spender, whipping out her own AmEx for $570 Jimmy Choo sandals from Saks. She also spent $600 at Coach and $4,410 at Giorgio Armani. Along with the Saks beauty aids, Lipscomb spent $150 at Coach, $636 at Armani and $237 at Niketown.
Yesterday, the mayor struck back. At a news conference announcing events planned for the upcoming Baltimore’s Fashion Week, Dixon told the crowd she was disappointed Vozella wasn’t present.
“What a shame,” she said. “We could have taught her a thing or two about fashion. This is the sarcastic side of Mayor Sheila Dixon.”
No word yet from Vozella on the mayor’s comments.
The mayor also got a little snippy when Jeff Hagar from WMAR-TV Channel 2 News asked if she saw any irony in her involvement with the fashion event in light of this summer’s revelations about her love for steeply-priced stilettos.
“I don’t even connect the two,” she said. “Now, you as the media, you have to do that because this is what you want to do. You want to try to destroy people’s characters…I look good, I wear great shoes and I want these young people to know that they look good as well.”
DANIELLE ULMAN, Business Writer
Sphere: Related ContentWhen is a victim not sympathetic?
July 30, 2008
Possibly when he or she lives for more than a year in a half-million dollar home while paying next to nothing.
In “Rescue is quirk of timing” in Wednesday’s edition of The (Baltimore) Sun, the lead anecdote is Veronica Peterson, a 45-year-old single mother of three who says she can’t keep up with the mortgage payments on a $545,000 house in Columbia. She says she expects an eviction notice any day. The story presents her as a victim of the foreclosure crisis.
However, that’s apparently not the full story. I’ll let the City Paper explain:
…in the comments section below the article, hundreds of readers pointed out what the Sun’s reporters and editors could not, apparently: that Peterson had no business in that house, and that she’s lived there for more than a year rent- and mortgage-free. “Where do you think we can get in on this deal?” one commenter, calling himself Henry Bowman, asked another.
The City Paper goes on to dissect the loan numbers:
The online court and land records show that Peterson closed on the house on Nov. 3, 2006, with two loans from Washington Mutual. The main mortgage, for $436,000, had a starting interest rate of 8.5 percent, adjusting in December of this year to the London Interbank Offered Rate plus 4.99 percent. The second loan, often called a “piggyback,” totaled $109,000 with an interest rate of 11.5 percent, according to The Sun.
Those two payments together would have totaled $3,386.17 per month. That’s before property taxes, upkeep, utilities, etc. Peterson would have to earn at least $50,000 per year just to make her house payments.
But it appears that Peterson made few–if any–payments. The foreclosure was filed July 31, 2007. The balance on the main note then was $435,735.86, plus unpaid interest accrued from Jan. 1, 2007, plus $1,005.72 in late charges. This suggests that Peterson made, at most, one payment on her house: the December, 2006 payment. Given the grace periods typical in home-mortgage business, it is at least as likely that her first payment was not due until January 2007, which would mean she has made zero payments.
Had she made all of her payments, Peterson would have spent about $64,335 so far. Had she rented a similar place, she would have been charged around $2,500 per month–a total of $47,500–since January 2007. Instead, she apparently paid nothing.
Not much of a “victim,” I’d say. I’m also shocked that someone would take out a mortgage for the full price of a home. Am I missing the down payment in this transaction?
JOE BACCHUS, Web Specialist
Sphere: Related ContentKubatko leaving Sun, joining MASN
July 30, 2008
It’s the end of an era — for the last three years, veteran Sun sportswriter Roch Kubatko has been entertaining Baltimoreans with his “Roch Around the Clock” blog and running commentary on Baltimore sports. Drawing more than 100,000 page views every week, Kubatko’s blog quickly became one of the most visited blogs at the Baltimore Sun and was often the most visited sports blog within its parent Tribune Co.’s newspapers.
But with The Sun’s recent overhaul of staff and content (dictated by the Tribune) and the second round of buyouts and layoffs since January, it appears as though Kubatko, who has been at the paper for 21 years, has had enough.
After taking the buyout offered companywide, Kubatko said “goodbye” in his last Sun blog posting today. Just hours later, the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network announced Kubatko will be joining its team officially on Friday and bringing his popular blog to MASNsports.com. It begs the question, how difficult was it to get Sun management to let him keep his blog, title and all, to a competing news medium?
Kubatko will also appear on MASN’s O’s Xtra and Ravens Xtra, the Orioles Hot Stove Show and the Anita Marks show. During baseball season, he will also co-host several pre- and post-game shows for the Orioles Radio network.
Kubatko is just one of the more visible examples of the longtime writers who will be soon leaving The Sun due to its staff cuts and paper redesign. How big of a loss is this for The Sun and how big of a gain is this for MASN?
LIZ FARMER, Business Writer
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