Today, looking over The Baltimore Sun website, I was drawn to a part
titled “History of The Baltimore Sun,” www.baltimoresun.com/sunhistory
. It is a 350-word exercise in idle irrelevance that must have been put together by some Zellous boobus
exChicagus.
Half of the text catalogs the various real
estate movements of The Sun from its opening on Light Street in 1837 up to its
present location at 501 North Calvert Street, and the development of Sun Park
at Port Covington, as if those were major accomplishments. Later it notes that
Tribune Company acquired The Sun when Times-Mirror “merged” with Tribune, without explaining how
on earth Times-Mirror of California ever became the owner of The Sun (as it did
in 1986 after paying the biggest price ever paid for a newspaper property). Finally,
it notes, “In 2007, real estate entrepreneur Sam Zell acquired Tribune Company.”
The peculiar and disastrous consequences of real estate entrepreneur Sam Zell’s
arrangements are not mentioned in this “history.” (Bankruptcy, for example).
Most appalling, the “history” (his·to·ry \ˈhis-t(ə-)rē\ : a chronological record of significant
events [as affecting a nation or institution] often including an explanation of
their causes – Merriam Webster) makes
no mention of The Sun’s remarkable accomplishments in the field of newsgathering
and reporting and technology, over a period of more than 160 years before Tribune took over; nor of its
commitment to national reporting with a Washington bureau staffed by a dozen
men and women, national correspondents travelling from Washington and stationed
in places as far away as Los Angeles, or of the development of a network of
more than a half dozen – sometime as many as nine -- foreign correspondents in
the far-flung capitals of the world. All of which, Tribune has eliminated.
This and much more could be recorded in
the official history of what was once one of America’s greatest newspapers. But
what appears on the newspaper’s website is not a history. It is bunk.
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