Doing the wrong thing
Earlier this week, I wrote about how The New York Times opinion section announced it will no longer write political endorsements for New York elections. That includes state senate, congressional or legislative races, as well as the New York City mayoral race.
Kathleen Kingsbury, the Times’ opinion editor, did not give a reason for the decision, but said in a statement that “Opinion will continue to offer perspective on the races, candidates and issues at stake.”
New York Magazine columnist Errol Lewis wrote that the Times is making a huge mistake. Lewis pointed out that state and local elections involve an “army” of candidates.
Lewis wrote, “Assuming even a modest amount of competition, voters can easily find themselves choosing from among hundreds of candidates in any given year to fill offices that control hundreds of billions in annual expenditures and determine New Yorkers’ streets, schools, housing, commerce, public safety, and other vital services. The average New Yorker, short on time, simply can’t be expected to follow the ins and outs of the many feuds, fights, and policy choices that pop up in various districts or the municipal, state, and federal battles that each official will encounter.”
In other words, New Yorkers rely on endorsements.
Lewis wrote, “The guidance is necessary, not optional.”
About the Times’ decision to drop endorsements, Lewis wrote, “What a colossal blunder.”
Concerned about paper’s future, Baltimore Sun union stages rally
For this item, I turned it over to my Poynter colleague, Angela Fu.
Wearing shirts that said “fair wages fill pages” and “we make the Sun shine,” unionized Baltimore Sun journalists rallied outside the paper’s offices Wednesday over concerns about the paper’s future.
The Sun, which was acquired by Sinclair Broadcast Group chairman David D. Smith in January, has been bargaining a new contract with the union since June 18. Some of the proposals the company has put forth so far have been “egregious,” according to the union. They include eliminating “just cause” — a common stipulation in union contracts that prevents a company from firing an employee without sufficient reason — and getting rid of seniority protections during layoffs.
This is the first time since 2007 that the union is renegotiating its entire contract, top to bottom. (The union had previously opted for extensions that kept much of its existing contract intact with minor changes.) The union is taking this opportunity to push for higher salaries and additional protections like parental leave, which is not included in the current contract, unit chair Christine Condon said.
“We were gearing up over these two years to do this because it has gotten to the point where — especially with the wages — we really needed to take this plunge,” Condon said. “Simultaneously, knowing a new company was coming in, we really wanted to from the beginning point out to that new company that this is a union paper and that the contract that we have is not enough.”
Smith’s acquisition of the Sun has worried both readers and journalists at the paper. Smith has supported former President Donald Trump, and his television stations are known for their conservative programming. In June, the Sun started to republish stories from Fox45, Sinclair’s local television station in Baltimore.
The union has said that some of those stories do not meet the Sun’s journalistic standards for balanced and accurate coverage. In a letter to management Wednesday, the guild demanded that the Sun stop publishing such stories, as well as content from “questionable wire services” like Sinclair’s national desk and conservative news site The Center Square. The guild also demanded that the Sun eliminate story quotas for journalists — a practice the Sun started to roll out in recent weeks, according to Condon.
Sun editor-in-chief and publisher Trif Alatzas wrote in an emailed statement that the company has been regularly meeting with the guild as they “both continue to bargain in good faith.”
“We believe the Guild agrees with us that terms contained in the contract held by prior ownership are woefully out-of-date, particularly given the seismic changes in today's news industry,” Alatzas wrote. “We owe it to our employees to have those discussions at the negotiating table where both sides can work collaboratively to reach an agreement. We are not interested in negotiating in public.”
Sun newsroom leaders have previously told Poynter that they see the Sun’s partnership with Fox45 as a way to expand the Sun’s coverage and that editors work to make sure all content published in the Sun meet the publication’s standards.
Though the Sun has started republishing stories from Sinclair, Condon stressed that reporters at the paper are still doing the same work that they had been doing before the change in ownership.
“There’s still a large group of hard-working journalists who were at the paper before and are here now, and we’re trying our best to keep doing our job,” Condon said. “We’re doing our job covering David, covering Baltimore politics the same way (as before). When you see Guild journalists’ names out there, it’s because we stand by our coverage.”
Possible debate dates
