The Baltimore Sun

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The June 16, 2009 front page of The Baltimore Sun
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner	Tribune Company
Publisher	Timothy E Ryan
Founded	1837
Headquarters	501 North Calvert Street Baltimore, Maryland 21278 United States
Circulation	210,098 Daily 351,243 Sunday[1]
ISSN	1930-8965
Website	baltimoresun.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 2007 was 232,360 for the daily edition and 372,970 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]

[edit] 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.

[edit] Daily

The Baltimore Sun's daily sections are now down to three: News, Sports and, some days, You, a separate features section. Other days, comics and such features as the horoscope and TV listings are in the back of the Sports section. A few pages of business news and opinion pages are found in the news section.^[6]

[edit] 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 eventually dropped the Maryland magazine and now carries Parade magazine in its place.

[edit] 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

[edit] Writers

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

[edit] 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.^[7] The Sun's printing facility at Sun Park has highly sophisticated, computerized presses, automated inserting equipment in the packaging area to keep pace with the speed of the presses and Automated Guided Vehicles; "intelligent" electronic forklifts that deliver the newsprint to the presses.

In 1885 the Sun constructed a building for it's Washington Bureau at 1317 F Street, NW.^[8] The building is on the National Register.

[edit] Controversies

• The paper became embroiled in a controversy involving the former governor of Maryland, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. (R). Ehrlich had issued an executive order on November 18, 2004 banning state executive branch employees from talking to Sun columnist Michael Olesker and reporter David Nitkin, claiming that their coverage had been unfair to the administration. This led The Sun to file a First Amendment lawsuit against the Ehrlich administration. The case was dismissed by a U.S. District Court judge, and The Sun appealed to the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which upheld the dismissal.^[9]

• 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.^[10] 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. ^[11]

[edit] Popular Culture

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

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Baltimore Sun Archives at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County