• by Ray Schultz , January 21, 2024

The Baltimore Sun staff is in a nervous mood following the news that David D. Smith, the chairman of the Sinclair Broadcast Group, was acquiring it from Alden Global Capital for an undisclosed sum.  

What concerns the staff is the belief that Smith -- said to be an ardent Donald Trump supporter -- intends to impose his political beliefs on the Sun so that it resembles the local Fox station, Fox45, according to The New York Times.  

The rival Baltimore Banner reported that the Sun plans to end political endorsements. Presumably, that would also includes endorsements of conservatives. 

But a staff meeting last week did little to reassure the Sun staff. Smith reportedly told the newsroom that he “had read the paper only a few times in recent months and hadn’t read it at all in the previous 40 years,” the Times reports. 

“What I expect is that he will make good on what he said, to turn The Baltimore Sun into the same thing that his Fox45 TV station is: a megaphone for right-wing disinformation and contempt for the city of Baltimore,” John E. McIntyre, a former editor who took a buyout and now works at the paper as a freelancer, told the Times. 

The purchase price for the Sun is said to be somewhere in the vicinity of $100 million. Smith purchased The Sun and several other newspapers from Alden with Armstrong Williams, a partner.

Smith urged the staff to be focused on profits. 

Meanwhile, the rival Baltimore Banner -- a paper that was started by Stewart Bainum Jr., a Democrat who once hoped to acquire the Sun -- now claims a newsroom with 70 staffers, almost as many as the Sun, the Times continues. 

The Sun was included in the $633 million purchase of Tribune Publishing by Alden Global Capital. 

The Baltimore Sun is a venerable publication that dates back to 1837. Among its illustrious alumni was H.L. Mencken, the satirist and columnist who also edited the Smart Set and American Mercury.