Readers are used to seeing signs of decline at The Baltimore Sun. Now the paper is beginning to look downright emaciated.
Saturday’s Baltimore Sun featured a lonely Editorial page. Gone was the Op-Ed page. There wasn’t 75 cents worth of anything in the Saturday Sun, unless you’re willing to pay for the car ads.
The weekday papers are still newsy, with Op-Ed pages and some special sections, but the advertisements are few and far between. Lots of space is given to Sun house ads or public-service ads for charities. The Sunday Sun, of course, is the cash cow.
Some recent developments:
- The Sports section is no longer a broadsheet but a tabloid. Its color is good, but it’s lost a lot of weight.
- The long gray columns of tiny agate type, listing the stocks and mutual funds, have been severely cut back, replaced by far less comprehensive tables. Hardly surprising. Tuesday’s (02-26-2008) six-page Business section had five pages entirely free of ads. If you can’t sell ads, you can’t afford to print the news.
- And just last week, The Baltimore Sun announced that it will begin publishing a free tabloid aimed at 18- to 34-year-olds. It will be modeled after a Chicago tabloid called RedEye. It will feature news lite, sports and entertainment, starting April 14, with 50,000 give-away copies, and going to 100,000 by the end of the year. The free tabloid will have its own Web site, with free, user-generated content.
Speaking of the Web, it appears that The Sun is working hard to drive its remaining readers to http://www.baltimoresun.com. The newspaper no longer has an index. In its place on Page 2A is a big gray box called SUNRISING: ONLINE TODAY AT BALTIMORESUN.COM. It touts the wonderful content to be found online.
Begging the question, if the company calls its cool, online product SUNRISING, what does it call its newsprint product?
Every recession since 1990 has staggered the newspaper industry. The Evening Sun was closed in 1995. Changes of ownership and direction came in 2000, when The Baltimore Sun and other Times-Mirror newspapers were acquired by the Chicago Tribune, and in 2007, when the Tribune Corp. was bought and taken private by billionaire investor Sam Zell.
For amusement and insight into the management style of the flamboyant Mr. Zell, you might go to YouTube and search for Sam Zell. You’ll find animated Sam Zell speeches, peppered with expletives, in which the new owner attempts to inspire a sense of urgency in the staffs at the Orlando Sentinel and the Los Angeles Times, sister papers to The Baltimore Sun. Check out Chicagotribune.com for a similar video of his talk at that newspaper.
Mr. Zell is quite candid about the current state of the newspaper business. “If we keep operating the way we were operating in the past, there is no future,” Zell told the staff of the Chicago Tribune. “Wake up to the fact that we’re on the edge.”
He answered one question by accusing an Orlando Sentinel staffer of “journalistic arrogance.”
Zell leaves little doubt that he is committed to turning around the Tribune and the Los Angeles Times. But what is he thinking, up there in his big office in Chicago, about the lesser lights, like The Baltimore Sun?
You can’t help wondering how much money Mr. Zell could save by discontinuing publication on the days when The Sun doesn’t sell much advertising, starting with Saturday.
And then, what about Tuesday and Thursday?
I wonder if Mr. Zell prefers to read a broadsheet newspaper, or a tabloid? — Bernie Hayden
Ocean City Blog 
Wayne C.
April 4, 2008
Bernie, I can remember your predicting several years ago that some papers will have to drop a day or two from their seven-day schedules. It’s begun to happen on the West Coast, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see it happen nearer to home.