The Baltimore Sun has dissolved its entire features section, reassigning some of its most celebrated writers to news departments and leaving the paper without any culture coverage for the first time since 1888, the paper’s guild announced.
The Baltimore Sun Guild torched the move in an X post Monday.
“Impacted by the cuts are features reporter Mike Klingaman, a Pulitzer Prize finalist, food and dining reporter Amanda Yeager, who consistently writes some of the Sun’s best-read stories, and Mary Carole McCauley, who has won 9 of her 10 national feature writing awards at the Sun,” the guild said. “The Sun will continue to cover news developments in the arts and food industries, but not the features, exhibit advances and reviews that make up the soul of features reporting.”
The Baltimore Sun dissolved its features department Monday, reassigning its staff to news departments – the first time since at least 1888 the newspaper won’t have even one reporter dedicated to covering the city’s cultural life. pic.twitter.com/6WAmhFcqdH
— Baltimore Sun Guild
(@baltsunguild) October 28, 2024
“These draconian measures are demoralizing, but they won’t deter the Baltimore Sun journalists,” the guild continued. “In the past two months, 8 union reporters have resigned – or more than a quarter of the news reporting staff. One was fired for speaking out, which the Guild has challenged. The Sun also laid off 3 union-represented advertising employees.”
The guild said it is “devastated” for the city’s chefs, artists, musicians and business owners “who are no longer considered worthy of coverage by their hometown newspaper – and for readers, who will lose information they can use to decide how to spend their money and time.”
The guild collected statements from several such figures, including Rebecca Hoffberger, founder of Baltimore’s American Visionary Arts Museum, who told a guild staffer that without the Sun’s “lavish, in-depth arts and architecture coverage of my idea for the American Visionary Art Museum back in 1991, there may well have never been an AVAM.
The feature desk’s demise is the last move in what feels like a dance of death to an independent journalistic spirit that The Sun has had,” Baltimore restaurant entrepreneur Tony Foreman told the guild. “It makes me very sad to see what historically has been a pillar of the community be turned into a spineless, shapeless agent of propaganda.”
The guild closed by saying its stance is simple: “If the Baltimore Sun isn’t covering culture, it isn’t covering Baltimore. Readers outraged by these decisions can submit a pre-written letter to Baltimore Sun owners David Smith and Armstrong Williams.”
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