By Griffin Bass and Connor James
Baltimore Watchdog Staff Writers
Maryland businessman Stewart Bainum’s decision to purchase the Baltimore Sun this week was greeted with hope and optimism from the newspaper’s newsroom as well as media analyst in the state and around the country.
Reporters who were interviewed said they hope the deal being worked out by Bainum, the Tribune Publishing Co. and Alden Global Capital, LLC, will mean brighter days for a newspaper that was once considered one of the best in the country.
“This means more money is invested in the paper itself, more of a focus on the strength of the institution and preservation of the function we play in society,” said Scott Dance, an environmental reporter for the Sun who is an active member of the newspaper’s union.
Dance believes the sale will help create more jobs throughout Baltimore Sun Media, including ‘back-office’ jobs like customer service that had previously been in the Tribune headquarters in Chicago as well as foreign countries.
“Our hope is that with this sale comes investment in community journalism, in reporters, editors, and photographers,” Dance said.
The sale of the Sun was announced as part of a $630 million deal in which Alden Global would purchase Tribune Publishing, which owns the Sun, the Capital Gazette in Annapolis, the Chicago Tribune, New York Daily News, Orlando Sentinel, Hartford Courant and other newspapers.
According to filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bainum will purchase the Sun and Gazette for $65 million from Alden Global through a nonprofit entity called the Sunlight for All Institute.
“There is good news for Baltimore and the Sun in today’s announcement,” Jay Rosen, a journalism professor at New York University, said in a tweet on Tuesday. “If the deal happens, the Sun will return to local owners. And it will escape the clutches of Alden Capital, the hedge fund that is acquiring the rest of Tribune to wring final profits from a dying asset.”
“In my opinion,” Rosen continued, “conversion to a non-profit puts an organization like the Sun on the road to a changed relationship to the community. You have to explain yourself in a different way. Operate like a community asset.”
A native of Takoma Park, Bainum is the chairman of Choice Hotels International, Inc. He also owns HCR Manor Care, which operates nursing homes and assisted living facilities, and other enterprises.
Bainum served in the Maryland General Assembly as a Democrat from 1979 to 1986.
Many journalists feel the future is bleak for the newspapers in the Tribune portfolio that will be going to Alden Global. They said the Sun was fortunate to be bought out by a privately-owned non-profit instead of going to Alden.
“If you’re a journalist, literally anything is better than being bought out by Alden,” said Barbara Allen, director of college programming for the Poynter Institute. “Alden’s track record speaks for itself. Their track record is to cut employees, to sell property, to drain every last dime they can out of businesses [publications] that are more closely associated with democracy and defending citizens than they are capitalism and making profit.”
“It’s well known how devastatingly thoughtless and callous Alden come across as,” Allen added. “They’re unresponsive to questions, they’re somewhat secretive, and just overall very poorly regarded.”
Although Alden Global has publicly claimed that it cares about the integrity and dedication of journalists, people within the journalism community believe otherwise.
“To put an audacious lie like that in front of these communities and these journalists is further evidence of their unsuitability as owners,” Anne Marie Lipinski, head of Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation for Journalism, said in reaction to Alden’s Tuesday statement saying it is committed “to ensuring the sustainability of robust local journalism.”
Many around Baltimore and the country are overjoyed by Bainum’s purchase to make the Sun a non-profit, saving the publication from Alden Global.
“YAAAAY,” Liz Bowie, the Sun’s education reporter, tweeted Tuesday night. “That’s all I can say right now.”
“In these times, local journalism is more important than ever,” Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott tweeted Tuesday. “This news is a win for The Baltimore Sun employees and a more transparent, accountable Baltimore.”
“This is going to be a huge morale booster,” Allen said. “They staved off the execution. It’s going to make them feel a lot better.”
As Baltimore celebrates the survival of the local paper, other publications that will be sent to Alden may not have the same fate, analysts said.
“My heart really goes out to the people to continue to be impacted by the actions of a hedge fund that has no appreciation for journalism’s role in democracy,” Allen said, noting that there is a serious problem with the way hedge funds have stepped into the media scene.
“We’re very concerned for the other papers in the Tribune chain,” Dance said. “With Alden getting full control, the trends that we’ve seen, this attrition and disinvestment…a bunch of newspapers in our chain don’t have newsrooms at all and when COVID is over, they don’t have a newsroom to come back to anymore, which is devastating to those institutions and communities.”
Dance said he is excited about the jobs that the acquisition will create in journalism for not only the Sun but the other Baltimore-region news outlets, including the Carroll County Times and the Capital Gazette, to name a few.
“It’s an investment to the community,” Dance said.