Sun reporters need Sun readers’ support

Members of the Baltimore Sun Guild rallied Wednesday in downtown Baltimore, outside the Sun newsroom, for a fair contract and an end to the substandard, non-Guild work that is now regularly filling our newspaper’s pages. Here are my remarks at the rally, followed by links to two news stories about our fight. There is also information about writing a letter directly to Sun management. Thank you for reading this.

We are asking our readers, present and former, to think about the importance of having a staff of eager, curious and hard-working professional journalists covering our community for The Baltimore Sun. We need your support now more than ever, and I really mean more than ever, and my perspective on “ever” is the last 48 years working for this newspaper as a news reporter and columnist. At no time in all that time did I feel the credibility of our newspaper was in question. Our unionized staff not only needs a raise — we haven’t had one in 13 years — we need a real commitment to uphold the journalistic standards that Sun journalists have worn as a badge of honor through all my time at the paper, even when we were being downsized by corporations and abandoned by advertisers.

No newspaper is perfect; we make mistakes; we get accused of bias; there are stories we miss. But, through it all, through all the years, publishing this newspaper day after day, reporters, sportswriters, editors and photographers produced a helluva lot of award-winning (and not just nominated) journalism, including Pulitzer Prizes.

I’m one of the old guys now, and I am so proud of reporters half my age who have a passion for good reporting and work so hard. The Sun’s coverage of the Key Bridge disaster this year was stellar, and the reporting of its aftermath continues to be. The city and the counties deserve a solid, credible daily newspaper providing, as our motto has said since 1837, Light For All. It only happens if readers support our journalists here, on the ground, at The Sun. They need to make a good living doing what they do. So one more time, I’m asking our readers to support them. Support us. We serve you. We serve this community. Please tell the management of the Sun you stand with us. Solidarity forever, under the Sun.

BALTIMORE BREW: Up against a conservative media mogul straight out of Central Casting, Guild members rally, demanding better pay and end to “questionable wire service” stories

BALTIMORE FISHBOWL: Baltimore Sun staff push back against quotas as they seek new union contract

GUILD STATEMENT: The pages of The Baltimore Sun should be filled mainly by its unionized journalists, who have decades of combined experience reporting in Maryland, not by a national media company with a worrying history of ideologically motivated programming.