Good ideas come along in unexpected ways. The spark for this book occurred one day in May 2012, when a close friend and former colleague at the Baltimore Sun, Jeff Price, and I were reminiscing about good old days at the paper.
It was just before the 2012 Preakness Stakes, the second leg of horse racing’s Triple Crown. We talked about poker games and characters at the Sun. We talked about travels together in Spain, Portugal, and then the Middle East where Jeff was the resident Sun correspondent and I was visiting with Senator Charles “Mac” Mathias Jr. after I’d left the Sun in 1985. We laughed about the Preakness in 1972, when we forgot to follow up on a tip to bet on a longshot named Bee Bee Bee, a little-known Maryland horse who bested the Kentucky Derby winner, Riva Ridge.
Recalling those heady days in 2012, as we handicapped the upcoming Preakness, I told Jeff that he really should write a book on his numerous and amusing exploits.
Jeff, or G. Jefferson Price III as his distinctive byline appeared, demurred that day—and once or twice more in e-mail exchanges. But after his second rebuff, I began thinking of the many interesting experiences that so many of our colleagues had had—and that it was too bad so few of them would ever be shared with the public. My muse was aided by the fact that the Baltimore Sun had become a pale shadow of the outstanding paper it used to be after several purchases by more bottom-line oriented corporations. By 2012, the Sun had no foreign correspondents when it once had as many as nine foreign bureaus strung across the world, no one in Washington where it once had a staff of fifteen, and a once huge local staff that had been decimated.
Soon, I began plotting to put together a collection of essays that would reflect the better days of the newspaper—which I had joined in 1965 and worked for until 1985—as a reporter, foreign correspondent, and editorial writer. Joining forces with Stephens Broening, the first Op-Ed page editor at the Sun and later its diplomatic correspondent, we launched plans for a full-fledged compendium of essays by twenty-five leading journalists at the Sun. We had two rules. We would recruit only those who had spent a substantial portion of their careers at the Sun, and we would ask each person to write interesting stories about a telltale slice of their experiences which would reflect the paper’s remarkable commitment to first-rate journalism. This volume is the result of an enthusiastic response from virtually everyone we invited to participate.
* * *
The advent of the Internet and 24/7 cable television has transformed the appeal and financial base of the newspaper industry—with mostly negative consequences. Not just millennials, but the majority of the population of the United States does not sit down with a broad-sheet newspaper anymore. The Internet, the digital age, television, and handheld devices reign.
Yet these developments have underlined the importance of serious, in-depth reporting and a need to share good journalism practices and habits with future reporters and editors. As the late John Carroll, a former colleague at the Baltimore Sun and editor of both the Sun and the Los Angeles Times, asked in a 2006 speech that serves as the conclusion to this book: “Who will make the checks at City Hall? Who—among America’s great din of flackery and cant—will tell us in plain language what’s actually going on?”
The Sun enjoyed many outstanding periods since its origin in 1837, all explored thoroughly by my coeditor in his lively introduction to this volume and in several chapters. We both feel that in the last half of the twentieth century that the paper was the best newspaper for an American city the size of Baltimore.
The freedom allowed to Sun reporters in that time—and before—was extraordinary, inspiring, and generally led to outstanding journalism. Reporters were given a long leash, trusted to do their job and more, with watchful but infrequent supervision. It was fun to go to work. A British transplant, Patrick Skene Catling, a reporter and foreign correspondent at the Sun in the 1950s, put it best in a charming book titled Better Than Working.
That rare blend of outright pleasure and serious commitment is evident in the personal stories highlighted in this book. Take in David Simon’s encounters with the police, which explain the street smarts and ear for dialogue he developed and turned into acclaimed television series like Homicide and The Wire. Or Tony Barbieri’s account of the colorful characters and idiosyncrasies of the Sun, the state of Maryland, the former Soviet Union, and across the globe as he moved in his amazing career from copy boy to managing editor.
Most importantly, the work at the Sun (and the Sunpapers) offered an opportunity to make a difference; to make a difference in people’s lives, in the conduct of public affairs, in the vital issues of the times—whether it involved the abuse of power, the impact of segregation, an emerging concern for the environment, far-off war zones—by looking behind the superficial flow of events and digging to find deeper realities and disturbing conditions. The chapter by Antero Pietila unveiled the injustice and terrible social dislocation caused by blockbusting and redlining; Tom Horton’s pathbreaking reporting focused public attention on the deteriorating condition of Chesapeake Bay; and Scott Shane’s investigative series on the National Security Agency came long before the dramatic disclosures after 9/11.
Other chapters demonstrate the value of rigorous investigative efforts to uncover brazen political corruption at top levels of government, even religious institutions, and inhumane industrial practices such as in the breaking up of ships. From abroad, Sun correspondents offered exemplary reporting on coups, earthquakes, and the diverse lives of distant and very different civilizations. Read Arnold Isaacs’s Time Travel or Dan Fesperman’s reports from the Balkan wars.
A word to explain the term Sunpapers: The A. S. Abell Company expanded in 1910 to publish an afternoon edition, the Evening Sun, and also included a Sunday Sun staff, mainly for features. The Evening Sun focused on local and state affairs for eighty-five years delivering a vibrant, intensely competitive mix of solid reporting and incisive commentary. Most Sun men and women were aware that their main competition locally was not Hearst’s News-American or the Washington Post, but their colleagues one hundred feet away in another city room. H. L. Mencken wrote his acerbic columns for the Evening Sun. Several contributors to this book, Dan Fesperman, Laura Lippman, and Bob Timberg, earned their early journalistic stripes reporting for the afternoon paper.
Today, more than a decade into a new century, the outlook for daily newspapers, even first-rate daily newspapers, remains troubled as technology evolves in unpredictable directions and as younger generations change how they receive news and information.
Our personal hopes, our main reason for organizing this book, revolve around two important goals. The first goal is that these chapters offer compelling evidence of a golden age of newspaper reporting, editing, and cartooning—its excitement, its excellence, and its impact on a great American city and an important state. The second is that they will encourage current and future journalists to draw inspiration and some practical lessons from the hard work, spirit, and dedication of their predecessors at an outstanding newspaper.
Frederic B. Hill
Arrowsic, Maine
November 2015