Veteran newsman turns a page

Baltimore Sun

veterans celebrate

colleague's book

Author Luxenberg investigated

his own mother's secret

I had a vision tonight: A young Mickey Rooney rushes up the steps to the back door of the home of Will Englund and Kathy Lally in Baltimore’s leafy Roland Park neighborhood, spins around and declares to a crowd of party-goers, “Let’s put out a newspaper!”

Then the ghost of Judy Garland appears, and they do a 1939-vintage song-and-dance number while, out front, a horse-drawn wagon carries a Linotype machine up Hawthorne Road.

Will is one of The Baltimore Sun’s last Pulitzer Prize winners, and with reporter-wife Kathy Lally, had two tours as the storied newspaper’s Moscow Bureau. Their home was the setting for the party -- celebrating publication of the first book by longtime colleague Steve Luxenberg, “Annie’s Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret.”

Co-hosts for the party, along with Steve’s wife Mary Jo Kirschman, were Francie Weeks and her husband Scott Shane, another former Moscow Bureau chief, who left The Sun to join the national staff of The New York Times. He wrote a book about the fall of the Iron Curtain – as a casualty of the information age.

The house and backyard were packed with talent representing the best of the newspaper’s foreign, national and local reporters over the last quarter-century, including Ann LoLordo, Arnold Isaacs, Antero Pietila, Mike Bowler, Dan Fesperman and his wife Liz Bowie, Jean Marbella, Eileen Canzian… and, not to name-drop, friends and former colleagues David Simon, creator of 'The Wire' among other post-newspaper accomplishments, and prolific novelist Laura Lippman.

In the blur of the joyous evening, forgive me if I’ve left out others. The talent that has passed through my old newsroom is amazing – and a few at the party are still there, holding on amid the white-knuckle downhill ride of American print journalism. Ann LoLordo, who was overseeing the editorial page and had jobs including Jerusalem Bureau chief during three decades at The Sun, was hurled out nearly two weeks ago without notice as the newspaper fired nearly a third of its news and editorial staff.

Luxenberg, a former Sun city editor who moved on to the Washington Post more than two decades ago, is one of the best news people I ever worked with. He was the editor who hired David Simon, a just-graduated University of Maryland newspaper editor and campus stringer for the Baltimore paper.

Sure there was nostalgia about newspaper days, and sadness at the upheaval making the future of print journalism uncertain at best. But mostly, the party was a great celebration for one of us who has taken a great next step in his life.

The family secret underlying “Annie’s Ghosts” was kept hidden by Steve’s mother, who until her death told just about everyone she had been an only child when, in fact, there had been an institutionalized sister.

Steve, who succeeded Bob Woodward as head of the Washington Post’s investigative and projects staff, delved into his own family’s mystery and emerged with a book that, coincidentally, was being celebrated on Mothers Day.

You can find out more about the book at http://steveluxenberg.com/content/index.asp, and hear Steve talk about the secret in an appearance at Baltimore’s Stoop Storytelling series at http://www.stoopstorytelling.com/shows/27/storytellers/208.

Newspaper weights and measures

Sun puts new spin
on ‘The Vanishing’
as staff, paper shrink

Something is missing in my Sunday paper – you know, The Baltimore Sun. An entire section has vanished. I seem to recall it as Section B, or Maryland Closeup, and though I'm told it happened a week or two ago, I just noticed yesterday.

Over the past two years, as The Sun was moving its elements around, eliminating some sections and consolidating others, there was usually a note to readers explaining the changes. Sometimes there was even a little audacity in suggesting the changes were improvements.

And after my initial wee-hours posting of this blog, I received an email and a Facebook note from friends who informed me that I missed the note to readers. As one of the fired editors put it, "The section was dropped two weeks ago, and a brief announcement was published saying that some content formerly in the section would be printed in the A section. Not, I concede, a conspicuous notice, but it was there."

I didn't find it on the electronic archive, so I'll have to wander down to the library later to see if I can find a copy of the notice I missed.

The disappearance of Maryland Closeup came just days before the newspaper’s purge of nearly a third of its editing, news and opinion staff through what has been charitably described as “layoffs.”

I called it a massacre. Firings. I had a comment from a reader criticizing my use of the word “fired,” saying it carries an implication that the employees had done something wrong. They hadn’t. But they were fired anyway.

In this world, you don’t have to do anything wrong to get fired. You can do a job better than anyone, and get fired because your higher salary was considered excess baggage by corporate bean-counters.

And these wonderful people, friends I worked with in my former life in the newsroom, did nothing wrong. They did their jobs well, demonstrated their professionalism and dedication by working longer hours than the standard 40 under their union contract (mostly without putting in for overtime), won honors for the newspaper, and were rewarded with unending abuse by the company – including a worthless, arbitrary employee evaluation system intended to justify giving one worker a $50 raise, while another gets $10 or less.

One of my thoughts in asking for a buyout in the newsroom reduction Class of 2007 was not wanting to ever fill out another evaluation of the small newsroom contingent I ostensibly supervised. It didn’t seem to matter what praise I wrote, how I graded. They all did their jobs to the point of excellence, but you couldn’t tell from the raises they would get.

Weights and measures

On a whim Sunday night, I drove down the road to my local Giant supermarket and picked up copies of The Baltimore Sun and The Washington Post, carried them over to the produce section and plopped them on a scale.

From a purely size-and-price standpoint, here’s how they measured up: The Post was half a pound heavier, and cost 38 cents less.

And the Post news report had Section B – and a Section C. That’s “Outlook” and “Metro,” respectively. And all three newsy sections, A, B, C, had an ample supply of Washington Post staff bylines, as opposed to The Sun’s sparse news beyond the Baltimore Beltway. (And they were followed by the sections for Sports, Style & Arts, Travel, Business, and a crappy advertising-driven Jobs. Sealed in a plastic bag were the Post's magazine, full comics section, TV Week, Parade, ad inserts and coupons.

Fair to compare? Maybe not. After all, Washington is the nation’s capital and the Post has greater resources and a definitively wider reach in its global coverage. The only purely local story on the front page is about Virginia politics. And Metro has entirely too much Virginia, and Montgomery and Prince George’s counties news for this Baltimore-and-burbs reader. I’ve never understood why The Post so disdains wider coverage of Maryland news, allowing its competitor 30 miles up the B-W Parkway free reign over metro Baltimore for the past two decades.

I’ve never been a Post subscriber. Only The Sun – and I buy it still. I thought about canceling in protest, as some readers of this blog say they have. But I still have friends on the inside, and don’t want to see the rug pulled out from under them through declining circulation numbers despite their own employer’s seeming intent on diminishing its value and angering readers. One equally dismayed newspaper friend suggested we go out and sell subscriptions to The Sun despite it all, in an effort to keep the print product alive.

Seems strange to me that the newspaper has gone to such lengths to get rid of 30-year employees and 30-year readers, though.

Baltimore Sun publisher/president/CEO Timothy E. Ryan (a triple-threat player!) has a “to the readers” note on Page 3 about the newsroom changes and how proud the newspaper is to provide “award-winning journalism to more readers than any other local news media organization.”

“We truly value the more than 1 million people who read us every week.” (Doubtless a one-page online click is counted as one of that million, and people who buy the paper on multiple days count as more than one reader. Numbers are so easy to manipulate.)

There’s also some bragging about how the newspaper benefits in being part of “the Baltimore Sun Media Group (BSMG)” that includes 28 community newspapers in the Baltimore metro area – most if not all of which, the note doesn’t mention, have been cut in staffing and frequency of publication.

That latest note to readers is just spin, I’m afraid. The readers are getting less than ever before, unless they rely on digital sources for their news. There’s an awful lot of readers, or would-be readers, who are not equipped or able to do that, and The Baltimore Sun has fired them, too.

BSMG, hmmmmm. There’s probably other uses for those letters. Maybe I should hold a contest.

The final photo

In recounting the last day at work for veteran, award-winning Sun photographer Chiaki Kawajiri, The Real Muck last week noted her final assignment before being given a mutually tearful layoff by her department boss: A lawyer with his pet bird.

The photo taken Wednesday afternoon appeared in Sunday’s editions, accompanying an article by Personal Finance columnist Eileen Ambrose. The early Sunday edition hitting newsstands on Saturday had an enormous photo on the front page of a dog wearing a dollar-sign neckband, and the lawyer-with-parrot photo on an inside page. The later editions had both the large dog and a shrunken lawyer-with-bird on the inside page.

Not to criticize the maximum waste of space in a news-shrunken newspaper with a two column-by-13-inch photo of a dog with jewelry, but there was no credit line saying whose photo it was. Probably a stock-agency photo of a dog, but usually a credit line will identify the source.

There also was no credit identifying Chiaki under her final photo for the newspaper. It just reads: Baltimore Sun Photo. I'm told that the lack of a credit on Chiaki's last photo was her own request.

Attention TV News

Since The Baltimore Sun does not seem likely to throw a farewell party for the 60-plus staffers given the bum’s rush last week, the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild is planning a reception for them – for the fired union-jurisdiction staffers as well as the editors and managers who were in the nonunion “merit system.”

The party – to which newspaper alumni and friends are invited – is being held from 6 p.m, to 10 p.m. Thursday in the Rockefeller Room of the Standard Building at 501 St. Paul -- at the corner of the Franklin Street hill just up from the Sun building. Anyone thinking about starting up a real Baltimore/Central Maryland newspaper (or buying the old one) will find plenty of available talent -- top talent!

Also in the works: A job fair for the suddenly unemployed newspaper staffers, beginning at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday (May 6) at St. Ignatius Church, 805 North Calvert St.

Also on Wednesday, the personnel massacre and downward spiral of the newspaper are sure to be the main topic of conversation at the annual luncheon of the Baltimore Sun Retirees Association, beginning at 11 a.m. with a cash bar, at the Engineering Club, 11 West Mount Vernon Place.

The Sun’s firing of many of its best, brightest and most senior employees has been grossly under-reported by the area television news programs that for years have relied on the newspaper to cue its own coverage of what’s happening in and around Baltimore. The old A.S. Abell Co. founded and owned WMAR-TV (Channel 2) until its 1986 sale of The Sun and broadcast properties to Times Mirror Corp. required divestiture under federal regulations. It has in recent years had news partnerships with the various stations, and currently with WJZ-TV (Channel 13).

We’ll see if Channel 13, in particular, takes this hint.

O’Malley rocks

Gov. Martin O'Malley (left) with fiddler Jim Eagan and accordion player Sean McComiskey, and, behind them, Ralph Reinoldi on electric guitar. (Photo by Bonnie Schupp)

Governor jibes at Post reviews
as his Irish band plays on,
celebrating release of new CD

Two shows at Creative Alliance
raise money for the arts center

In a rare occasion for a politician, nary a word of complaint was heard Saturday night as Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley fronted his O’Malley’s March band in a pair of packed shows at Baltimore’s Creative Alliance.

At least no one in the audience seemed to have a complaint. O’Malley himself voiced a few, with jibes at Washington Post reviews and reporting on his band’s CD’s, including the just-issued fifth – Galway Races – for which the shows also served as a huge release party.

To speculation that the title had something to do with Maryland’s racetrack woes, or problems delaying the award of slot machine gambling licenses, O’Malley said, “I just happen to like the song.”

“Galway Races,” a traditional song, is the first of the CD’s 13 tracks – all covers of songs recorded by others, including Green Day’s “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life),” which effectively helped close Saturday night’s show.

Introducing another cut, the Saw Doctors’ “Wisdom of Youth,” O’Malley became briefly gubernatorial in offering up praise for the nation’s young people, and movingly spoke of his honor in being with the families of those who return from service in Iraq and Afghanistan, and “those who don’t.”

For the record, I haven’t heard any of O’Malley’s CD’s, and am waiting until after I finish this commentary to play Galway Races. Bonnie and I bought two copies (one for an eventual gift to some lucky friend, Irish or no) and stood in line to get them autographed by the governor and his six band partners.

I’d have to crank up the volume a lot higher than our equipment could handle to match the intensity of the band’s late show, which lasted two full hours without a break in the music. O’Malley had a couple of breaks, not only to duck backstage on a few numbers but when his guitar capo virtually exploded and again when one of the strings snapped in a dramatic musical moment. (The governor, not missing a lick, showed himself equally adept at five-string guitar while playfully whipping the dangling sixth at fiddler Jim Eagan.)

O’Malley’s March absolutely rocked the old Patterson movie theater, restored as home to the nonprofit Creative Alliance arts organization. From our front-row vantage, Bonnie had to deal with seat shake and what felt like floor shake from the music as she experimented with her new Nikon camera and took dozens of pictures of the show, whose proceeds at $25 a ticket benefited Creative Alliance.

What can you say about a band whose weakest link is, in fact, its leader. O’Malley has, at best, a very average singing voice (I confess to having the worst) and seems to be a good, but not necessarily great, guitarist. But he clearly knows how to surround himself with people more talented than himself. I view that as the mark of a smart politician. The seven of them together soared to musical heights in the performance. And how great a voice does anyone expect in a rock band, Irish or otherwise?

The other players are the multi-instrumental Jared Denhard (trombone, pipes, harp and whistle), Jamie Wilson (drums), Ralph Reinoldi (electric guitar), Pete Miller (bass guitar) and the great Billy’s son Sean McComiskey (button accordion).

Among those taking in the pre-St. Patrick’s Day show was a visiting (northern) Irish politician – Councillor Gerard Diver, or as he was introduced to draw the winning tickets in a raffle for a basket of shamrocks, “Mayor Gerry of Derry.”

He clapped and laughed throughout the show, and when asked afterward whether O’Malley could make a go of it musically in Ireland, Mayor Gerry in a broguish chuckle observed, “He’s got a lot of energy.” (According to the Derry Journal, Diver himself played in a well-known local band called Tie The Boy before entering politics. He was the guitarist. And the band practiced in the drummer’s basement… interesting, considering that the latest O’Malley CD was recorded in his drummer’s basement.)

At the show’s finale, I thought about exhorting an audience chant of “four more songs.” But artistically, it wasn’t the thing to do. The show started out strong, and ended even stronger. It was worth every farthing.

And what the hell, I’m not a newspaper journalist anymore. I may not agree with him or any politician on every issue, but I like O’Malley. He plays with passion.

Four more years, dammit.


O'Malley, in finale, bangs Irish drum while Jared Denhard plays trombone. (Photo by Bonnie Schupp)