Last year I canceled my subscriptions to The New York Times and The Washington Post over their inexcusable coverage of President Biden and the presidential election, and over their specious justifications of their conduct. I now subscribe to The Guardian for national and international news, The Baltimore Banner for local news, and recommend that you do similarly.
This morning I finally took the next step, canceling my subscription to The Baltimore Sun, to which I have subscribed for nearly thirty-nine years and where I worked as an editor for thirty-four years, nearly half my life.
A year ago this month David Smith of Sinclair Broadcasting bought The Sun, and he and co-owner Armstrong Williams have systematically degraded a once-great newspaper, filling its news pages with low-grade pap from Sinclair and Fox 45. It is the Vichy Sun. I can skip Armstrong Williams's laughable opinion pieces and the op-ed screeds from Republican backbenchers in the General Assembly and nostalgic veterans of the Reagan administration, but the news matters.
Many members of the staff have left in disgust, at least one who quit over interference with her reportage without having another position lined up. I suspect others hope to achieve escape velocity.
There are still some people on the staff whom I can hold in esteem, and I have maintained my subscription, despite my disgust, out of solidarity with the members of the News Guild who have been fighting gallantly for a decent contract and reputable editorial standards.
But as with The Times and The Post, it becomes a question whether as a customer one should continue to give money to an operation one can no longer respect or endorse. The term of my current subscription will run out by the end of the month; in February I will no longer be complicit.
Well said. I’d love to see subscriptions plummet to the point she goes on the market and new ownership respects independent journalism.
ReplyDeleteI'm on board with your decisions, sir. I canceled my Baltimore Sun subscription the moment David Smith bought the publication. Not one cent of mine will help support the Smith & Sinclair agenda if I can help it.
ReplyDeleteCanceling my Washington Post subscription was painful. It was much like ghosting a dear old friend—an old friend who I'd caught lying to me.
I'm still hanging on to my NYTimes subscription but I'm teetering. I keep telling myself it's because The Times publishes a great cooking section. It isn't. It's because I've subscribed to the Times since my senior year in high school—some 57 years ago. Some habits are harder to break than others.
I almost canceled WaPo but it’s my hometown paper that I grew up with
ReplyDeleteI have been waiting for your signal.
ReplyDeleteHard decision but I understand.
ReplyDeleteYou may want to consider an online subscription to my alma mater, the Philly Inquirer. Despite its much-diminished print presence, it is owned by a nonprofit and does not pander to the powerful. And it still employs a cadre of dedicated journalists.
ReplyDeleteBased in Scotland and cancelled my WaPo subscription in November as well. My concern is how do we preserve investigative journalism? People prepared to pay for journalism are few and far between these days. WHO or what replaces us?
ReplyDeleteIn Chicago, we are fortunate to have both a member-supported hyper local news site (BlockClub) created by the staff of the former DNA Info, fantastic local reporting from our public television station WTTW, and a subscription-supported partnership between the Chicago Sun and Chicago Public Media, our local NPR affiliate. We proudly support all three.
DeleteI agree with your analysis of Smith and the Fox45ers but I currently struggle with the Banner being the only daily news source as I don’t think they YET measure up. But as astute as you are and as longstanding a reader as I am perhaps thinness is where the Sun was fated to go once the paper went to the first outside owner and Reg Murphy “modernized” the “product.”
ReplyDelete"What road do I take for Grenitch Conn quired my father with poping eyes.
ReplyDelete"Take the Boston post replid the policeman.
"I have all ready subscribed to one out of town paper said my father and steped on the gas so we will leave the flat foot gaping after us like a prune fed calf and end this chapter."
-- Ring Lardner, "The Young Immigrunts"
For state-level news I use https://statesnewsroom.com/ so that's https://marylandmatters.org/ for Maryland.
ReplyDeleteIt's the Kentucky Lantern here in Kentucky that now provides the bulk of Kentucky journalism, along with our NPR stations. https://kentuckylantern.com/ The "Kentucky" Enquirer has maybe half of a reporter covering an area of nearly half-a-million people. The Courier-Journal in Louisville is a small shadow of its former self. The Herald-Leader in Lexington tries hard but remains tiny.
DeleteI started with the Times in 2006, on the business side, not the newsroom. My job was to establish college readership programs that integrated our content into curriculum. We’d partnered with AASCU on the American Democracy Project, sharing their goals of fostering civic engagement, information literacy and a lifelong habit of reading. Our detractors frequently accused us of grooming students to become subscribers, to which I’d say, “Umm, yeah? And?”
ReplyDeleteAround 2009 I accompanied a Times reporter to a panel talk at a Midwest journalism school. One of the questions was why the Times often seemed often late to a story, and another, how the online product affected filing deadlines.
The reporter said the questions were connected. The perceived “lateness” was due to the newsroom’s long dedication to coverage that had been diligently sourced, vetted and fact-checked and before it hit the presses.
The reporter lamented the “good old days” of a single print deadline, but now, posting to digital became almost constant. Some perceived company leadership held that it was now “better to be early than accurate”. That response was jarring. Something was up. We were entering the race for eyeballs and email addresses at the cost of accuracy: All the News That’s Fit for Clicks.
I am right there with you on the Sun and will be cancelling our long-running Sunday NYT subscription at the end of this month. never had the WaPo and have no desire to. Also use the Guardian and the Banner (and read the BBJ as well).
ReplyDelete