The Baltimore Sun at 175

The Baltimore Sun at 175

Several months ago, I chastised The Baltimore Sun for having such a pathetic account of the newspaper’s history on its web site. A week ago, the Sun published a magazine celebrating the newspaper’s 175th anniversary with several delightful articles by such notable alumni as Russell Baker, Helen Delich Bentley, Dan Fesperman, Jack Germond, Stephen Hunter, Laura Lippman, David Simon and such prominent Baltimore natives as Barry Levinson, and Nancy Pelosi.

The publication made up for what’s missing on the Sun’s website although no change has been made there, which is surprising for a newspaper that lives by the world wide web these days.

Here are some observations about some of the articles in the anniversary publication:

The headline on the article by Helen Bentley recalling her days as maritime reporter and later maritime editor for The Sun, read “A reporter makes the news.”  The headline brought to mind the time she made news, not as a reporter, but as chair of the Federal Maritime Commission – an appointment she obtained thanks to the influence of then-Vice President Spiro T. Agnew -- and was going around the country shaking down shipping companies regulated by the FMC for contributions to Nixon's re-election committee, which, among other outrages, orchestrated the Watergate break-in.

Nancy Pelosi's gush of fondness for The Sun might have noted that her father, former Congressman and longtime Mayor of Baltimore Thomas D’Alesandro, was hardly fond of the paper that often opposed him and the shenanigans of the D’Alesandro machine. When he won a race against a Sun pick he and his followers paraded around The Sun building hollering taunts and honking their horns.

Barry Levinson's piece must be a first in opportunities for a film-maker to get even with a reviewer, in this case, Lou Cedrone of the Evening Sun, who apparently didn’t “get” the movie “Diner.” Cedrone may have been out of touch with the social streams that inspired Levinson, but, so, probably, were most of his readers. And, really, how often does a film-maker get the opportunity for more space than the original review, to heap vengeance two and a half decades after the fact.

Russell Baker's reminiscence of his days at The Sun was delightful, especially the account of managing editor Charles “Buck” Dorsey’s  martini-soaked invitation to go to London.

 I was no Buck Dorsey, but when I became The Sun’s foreign editor, Baker’s reminiscence inspired a ritual of my own in which I would invite a successful candidate for an overseas assignment to meet me for a martini before telling him or her that the job was theirs.

David Greene, now enjoying a very successful career at NPR, told me recently that he was in The Sun’s Carroll County bureau working alongside John Murphy when I invited Murphy to meet me for a martini at the Harryman House in Reisterstown to inform him that he had been selected to go to Johannesburg. Greene told me that Murphy barely made it home afterwards. Poor chap. I don’t think we had more than one martini.

Murphy did a bang-up job and I only once reprimanded him. This was after he had been transiting through Paris and turned in an expense account for a meal there that cost less than $10. "Have you no shame?" I demanded. "You're a correspondent for The Baltimore Sun; not for 'Paris on $10 a Day.' How dare you turn in such a paltry expense account."

David Simon’s tribute to rewrite man par excellence David Ettlin might leave one with the impression that Ettlin’s forte was limited to local news. Not so, as I discovered one day in the 1980s while working as The Sun’s Middle East correspondent.

I was at the airport hotel in Frankfurt Germany having arrived there after two challenging weeks in Tripoli, Libya, which Reagan had bombed, missing just about every intended target. Thinking my job was done, I treated myself to a cocktail and a good schnitzel dinner with a little Leibfraumilch, and was just turning in when the phone rang. Baltimore calling. It was Saturday and the managing editor wanted an “analysis” piece from me for Sunday’s paper, deadline in a few hours. I struggled with this piece, tapping it out on my portable Olivetti typewriter (no computers in those days) and as the deadline approached I knew that what I had was not up to snuff. But I had to deliver it. So I called the newsroom to dictate and they turned me over to a clerk. “No,” I pleaded. “Give me Ettlin if he’s there.”  He was, thank God.

“Dave,” I told him, “I need to dictate this piece of crap to you. Can you try to fix it up.”
“No problem,” he said.

The next morning I awoke, dreading the daily “frontings” message that Baltimore sent out by Telex to correspondents informing them what stories had played where in the paper. The message also included instructions to correspondents, requests, and – what I feared most that day – occasional critiques of stories.

I fully expected a message something like “Your crap spiked. Return Baltimore immediately for re-assignment to the police beat.” Instead, the message I read over and over with tears of relief read: “Kudos your excellent Libya piece!” Ettlin had saved me.

One did not see stories as they actually were published until the newspaper arrived – in Jerusalem, in my case – by mail. It was not until more than a week later that I actually saw what had appeared under my byline. By God, it was a good piece. The only flaw in it was the byline, which should have been “By David Ettlin.”