As the heyday of the daily newspaper passes into history, expect to see more sites like this one, which is devoted to laid-off staffers from the once-great Baltimore Sun telling their personal stories. As a veteran of a now-defunct daily newspaper myself — the afternoon San Francisco Examiner during the Reg Murphy era (Murphy went on to become the editor of the Sun) — I’m especially sympathetic to such tales, but the time has come for all of us who are living through the end of the Newspaper Era to face up to the fact that’s it’s gone and it’s not coming back.
In the spring of 2009, The Baltimore Sun laid off about 60 people, including about a third of the newsroom staff.
This Web site records the bittersweet memories of many of those people. Some recall the pain of being fired; others the challenges, joys and spirit of newspaper work.
Baltimore Sun building, c. 1939
The Web site grows from a fellowship project conceived and funded by the Writers Guild of America, East Foundation, which has a mission of perpetuating the art and craft of storytelling. Like other WGAE Foundation projects, this one gave the laid-off Sun employees an opportunity to process a difficult experience through creative work.
Participating fellows include reporters, editors, critics, copy editors, photographers, designers, advertising salespeople and market researchers. In addition to the essays, poems, photos and videos, they also designed the web site and edited the submissions.
Please give it a respectful read, then let us have your thoughts.
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42 Comments
Sorry, but I don't have to read past the first section which contains a subtitle, 'black homo blues.'
It's good they're gone, and that papers like this are going bye-bye..
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There (The news Papers) are so left wing, they lost, I mean really lost, as you can see now the conservatives are up in arms, not that we need constant right wing news we need and needed fair and a greater balance in the news, Amen
The Sun wasn't known as the Calvert Street Democratic Club for no good reason. As the only game in town, the editors wielded the power of the press with an iron left hand. And hid behind anonymity with their editorial rants, never having the courage of their convictions to put their names on the propaganda they pushed. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
My local newspaper is just the newsletter for the DNC. Even my neigborhood paper has turned into a Marxist rag.
Suprisingly, the Sun has gotten better since the layoffs ocurred. Less partisan write ups. My guess is that they let all the old left wing people go and kept the recent college graduates, who have not been brain washed yet.
I tried to give it a respectful read but could not. I worked for a major daily in the Eighties. Even then, vultures circled. The reasons were self-evident: basically stupid people were the only ones drawn to the profession by that time, technology was advancing that would eliminate the need for print ads, and readers more often than not had greater intellect and education than the editorial staff. So by the end of that decade, stupid people were employed to transmit information they couldn't grasp to folks who had heard about it in depth elsewhere, and no one wanted to waste their money on advertising in objects of first ridicule and finally indifference.
The website you linked actually represented this phenomenon more than it intended. I did continue to read despite "black homo blues," but with a justifiably jaundiced eye from that point. The vast majority would not have and frankly I don't blame them.
At one point, newspapers kept things relatively honest despite their inherent biases. Now they are buggy whips mourned by ignorant people who cannot get jobs elsewhere. Good riddance.
When newspapers started self-censorship by omissions (no vetting of candidates) and propaganda by agenda-driven 'reporters' (global warming hoax/socialism) they committed suicide. It's just taking a long time for the dying quivers to subside.
I'd be happy to end the misery had I that power. All I can do is not spend a nickle on them.
At least the newspaper is willing to admit that they engage in storytelling and not reporting the facts.
From Michaels post:
"East Foundation, which has a mission of perpetuating the art and craft of storytelling".
The papers now give "storytelling" a whole new meaning…
"If getting rid of me, no matter how vital my voice has become in this black city, means saving their jobs or other white folks they like, so be it."
Wow. I can't help but think and wonder, wouldn't the majority of players in the Black Homo Blues story be uber-liberals? Minus 'The -stereotypical- Viper' with blond hair of course (subconscious reference to Anne Coulter?). This guy is so consumed by his skin color…he's consumed about not being recognized as legitimate around a lot of white people (invisibility). These are his feelings around Liberal white people. Sanctimonious Liberals who seemed to have bent over backwards to accommodate him and he thinks of them like scum . And the only conservative (who must be extremely rare at a liberal newspaper) is of course a stereotypical ice-woman with anti-freeze for blood. Wow, he's so consumed! You all must read the Black Homo-blues guy. Out of Arkansas…wow, how sad, this black guy had/has a father who basically poisoned his son into a whitey's-out-to-destroy-us-n-ggas world view. Such black rage in our enlightened Obama times.
The standards for being a journalist seems to have slipped over the past 30 years.
They failed in the one area that cannot be compromised, TRUTH. The poignant little word that no wiggle room,and no shades of grey
it is what it is and does not care if you believe it.
It is too late for the current crop of "journalists".
They may want to print a different title on the next set of business cards
Dog Walker—BabySitter—Cashier—DishWasher.—Come to mind.
Good post. I'd modify one of your tenets slightly. To "stupid people" I would edit that to be "agenda driven stupid people." Journalism schools now teach that their pupils can change the world. Of course that change is to achieve social justice.
The demise of wicked print media, along with the Kennedy infestation is leading the way to a better America. The Sun was so corrupt that Kennedy slayer Robert Ehrlich had to get a restraining order to keep reporters away from his staff. I am not quite so happy to see the end of print media as ruination of the empires that controlled them. There was a time when the Washington Post was a great newspaper. Most newspaper writers today were not born then. Now, I would not sully my hands to touch the post and when their by-line appears or McClatchy's, I do not give a second thought to the story. And NYT? Never heard of it!
When I saw the 'black homo blues' I instantly thought of Obama… but he likes white guys too, doesn't he? Gotta be tough to be in the public eye so much, no more basement meanderings, secret liasons. But, not to despair, Kevin Jennings is his new Homo Czar of NAMBLA and provacteur of multi-cultural indecency. And not that anyone ever said anything or I ever heard such a thing but that Van Jones guy had the gaydar alert screeching!
i'm throwing eggs at everyone from the NYT when they shut down. yep, gonna make my way up eighth avenue with a few dozen cartons tucked under my arm, whistling dixie, except this time the fantasy will be real.
Unless they get to hear dear leader vilify any media unless the elite approve the "truth" first and are actually uneducated enough to agree with him..
Be sure to wear a union shirt of some sort if you do. The electrician union hens from Nevada took their eggs to Searchlight in respect of a Tea Party function.
As someone who likes to relax in the corner of a restaurant booth with a good newspaper, I wonder what would happen if someone would start publishing a real conservative newspaper nationwide? I bet it would be wildly popular as long as the government left it alone, which probably wouldn't be long.
Closest thing we have is the Wall Street Journal.
Guess who's circulation is the best?
Oh what will I wrap my fish in? Good riddance.
It's NOT just the newspapaers – it's the "journaliam schools" that supposedly "teach journalism" which they really
do NOT teach they do more left wing Progressiveism indoctranation than anything else. So what is it that you can
expect?? Until such time as these"schools" actuallt teach something related to "jounalism" this is the crap one can expect.
Momatoya brings an interesting point could a conservative based newspaper survive. I have wondered the same, but the technology pushes forward I like the tactile feel of a paper or a book, and I cant stand to hold or read an E-book. However, I sit here at my computer and read more in an hour then I use to read in a week. With the portability of a laptop that availability is everywhere, I am no longer limited to the choices at the three vending machines outside the coffee shop.
When they began with propaganda instead of news it marked the beginning of the end for this newspaper and for all the rest who follow in lock step with the progressive movement.
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The internet is to the newspaper what the barbed wire fence was to the cowboy.
Well said.
I finally dumped the paper and I feel good about it. I get the news on my terms, not some pimply faced yutz that villifies and attacks my thinking – tells me how I ought to feel rather than offer a whit of a balance. I was fascinated when radio mogul Sam Zell dumped most of his sheckles into the Tribune Group. He put his old radio managers in charge. To bring in new blood? Now that was a peach of an idea? ALOHA
owned by the same guy who owns Fox News, highest rated of all the cable news shows too – who woulda thunk it?
Very well put, indeed. The next question, of course, is what will replace this medium? I'm assuming that right now, not enough of a vacuum exists that ordinary persons notice any difficulty getting news. They notice that they cannot rely upon the news, in many cases, but they can get answers to the question: "what is happening?"
We see that radio is fulfilling some of the need for news, and blogging is also filling the role. How will "on scene" reportage be handled? Right now, AP, Reuters, and similar are still retailing this news wire information (to a dwindling customer base). Will the future hold a method where this can be provided with little or no cost, thus promoting the blog method? If so, how will revenue be earned? Will that be via advertising at the wire service level?
We live in "interesting" times.
You are correct. To quote Springsteen those jobs are going boys and they ain't coming back.
Same thing happened to me, but a different industry. I graduated college with a degree in electrical engineering technology, landed a job at IBM, just in time to have a front row seat for watching the PC business destroy the main frame business.
It sucks and there's nothing you can do about it, except move on to greener pastures.
I went to the site, I watched a video, I heard the pain of those leaving the business. It is like a major trajedy in life when one has to change or move on with their secure position. We ask ourselves why do we have to suffer, it is all part of the human experience. It makes us move from where we are at to where we should be. We learn new things, reflect and change the bad to good. We are stronger than we know, to move on with life and bring new and innovative thinking to the front, like flying and driving a car. We have to get rid of the horse and buggy. Yes there will always be the traces of horse and buggy (newspapers) however whatever we have done to move forward is great. We now will invent something new and all those laid off will create something great and new. They may not know it yet, but they will out of pain and struggle, create work for themselves in a fresh way. I think we should be glad we are not still driving the horse and buggy way, just to make a man have a job. We should embrace a struggle to gain the knowledge of how to be better. "Men are that they might have joy."
Idealistic college grads, Journalism students, straight out of Marxist U?
Somehow I have doubts about that.
Most have pointed out that when the papers made that left turn they lost their audience. But I contend that would still be toast — Supply Chain Collapse.
When the Internet started going commercial back in the '90's the days of the paper shuffling middleman was numbered. They were replaced by the XML program at firms like WalMart, Target, etc. Industry after industry fell to the Collapse. Unstoppable. So the MSM come along and think they are immune to the Collapse? Pleassssse. One of the most fungible items suitable to the Collapse is information, which happens to be all that papers deal in.
So there they sit with those million dollar 4 color presses, fleets of trucks and employees. All suitable for replacement by a T1 line and a $10k server. Do they respond to the Collapse? No they resist. Only now with their backs to the wall do they go screaming into their own digital hell.
Sorry MSM, as an industry you are are not unique.
It's too bad that traditional newspapers are tanking. But American industry as a whole has been changing, and literally millions of Americans have been adversely affected. Sorry newsboys, but your story is not unique. Welcome to the real world.
I get the Sunday Sun because it is part of a package deal that came with the local paper (owned by the Sun). Every Sunday I bring it inside, my wife takes the advertising section, my son grabs the comics and my daughter uses the rest to line the bottom of her pet rabbit cages. Nobody reads any part of it.
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Why are my comments being deleted
You must have software problem…
Wall Street Journal?
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