Free Republic

In an interview last year, Mr. Freeman argued that the austere cuts enacted at his newspapers reflected a more realistic understanding of the industry’s direction and better positioned Alden-owned publishers for the pandemic’s downswing. “We were prepared for a real step down in terms of a recession because we were honest about what was needed in the future,” he said. “Numbers don’t lie.” The newspaper industry’s numbers looked bleak even before the pandemic. Annual advertising revenue dropped 70%, or $34 billion, between 2005 and 2018, according to estimates by the Pew Research Center. More than 1,800 newspapers closed between 2004...

Washington -- I was right. I have been right for over 50 years. Through those at times lonely years, I have been patronized by affluent magazines and newspapers for setting up The American Spectator as an organ of opinion that eschewed making a profit. I would cover our expenses in other ways. I did not ignore making a profit, but I had studied the plight of intellectual reviews and recognized that an intellectual review -- like a symphony orchestra, like a museum, like a think tank -- rarely makes a profit. There simply is not a large enough audience to...

flashback 4/3/2020 There’s lots of talk about being too tough on crime. As Michael Bloomberg ran for president earlier this year he faced criticism for his “stop- and-frisk” policy when he was the mayor of New York City. Gov. Larry Hogan was at odds with the Maryland General Assembly during this year’s legislative session over his support of mandatory sentencing for gun violations. When Hillary Clinton ran for president nearly four years ago she was forced to apologize for once saying there were predators in the black community. Likewise there are well meaning progressives who are concerned about discriminatory policing,...

CNN recently had David Zurawik of the Baltimore Sun on as a guest. He complained about Trump’s press briefings on the Coronavirus and said offensive things about Trump supporters and no one pushed back at all. How sadly typical. The Washington Examiner reports Liberal Media Scream: Reporter suggests payback for Trump voters, ‘now your loved ones can die’ Zurawik on the April 12 Reliable Sources with Brian Stelter: “Health workers are risking their lives daily. And to see him come out there and for 90 minutes, and two hours, sometimes, doing exactly what you said — he’s spinning a...

The Baltimore Sun penned a scathing editorial following President Donald Trump's claims that Baltimore "is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess." According to Trump, if Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) spent more time in his district, it would no longer be a "dangerous and filthy place."According to the Sun, Trump's comments were geared towards Cummings because he's "been a thorn in the president's side."From the editorial: It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the...

The Baltimore Sun penned a scathing editorial following President Donald Trump's claims that Baltimore "is a disgusting, rat and rodent infested mess." According to Trump, if Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) spent more time in his district, it would no longer be a "dangerous and filthy place."According to the Sun, Trump's comments were geared towards Cummings because he's "been a thorn in the president's side."From the editorial: It’s not hard to see what’s going on here. The congressman has been a thorn in this president’s side, and Mr. Trump sees attacking African American members of Congress as good politics, as it both warms the...

WASHINGTON - Five journalists must identify the government officials who leaked them details about a scientist under scrutiny in the 2001 anthrax attacks, a federal judge said Monday. U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton ordered the reporters to cooperate with Steven J. Hatfill, who accused the Justice Department and FBI of violating the federal Privacy Act by giving the media information about the FBI's investigation of him. The reporters named in the opinion are Michael Isikoff and Daniel Klaidman of Newsweek, Allan Lengel of The Washington Post, Toni Locy, formerly of USA Today, and James Stewart, formerly of CBS News....

On Monday, Goucher College journalism professor and longtime Baltimore Sun media critic David Zurawik accused President Donald Trump of using a dictator tactic — telling so many lies as to exhaust the free press into silence. "He says something that’s really offensive about immigrants, and then Tucker Carlson says immigration makes us a dirtier country," Zurawik said. "That is really destructive to American life." He urged journalists to fight back. "We have to denounce it, but every time we do that, every time we chase that down, he is setting the agenda for what we cover, and none of us,...

An armed society is a polite society. -- Robert A. HeinleinOnly in liberal America would someone be less afraid of a criminal with a gun than a law-abiding gun owner. And certainly only in this warped sense of reality would they be for a gun registry, not for furthering an agenda, but for making play dates safe. That's what Tricia Bishop of the Baltimore Sun wrote on January 6; that we should have a gun registry akin to those used to track sexual predators. No, I'm not joking [emphasis mine]: I’m less afraid of the criminals wielding guns in...

A Baltimore Sun columnist wrote in a Thursday op-ed that citizens who legally own firearms are more frightening than the criminals who use the weapons on the rough streets of her hometown. Tricia Bishop, deputy editorial page editor for the Baltimore paper, explained how billboards advertisements for guns and everyday Americans carrying them around made her sick. "I'm less afraid of the criminals wielding guns in Baltimore... than I am by those permitted gun owners," Bishop said. She says this because she believes as a middle-class white woman, she's shielded from her city's criminal element but, in her opinion, she's...

A Baltimore Sun columnist wrote in a Thursday op-ed that citizens who legally  own firearms are more frightening than the criminals who use the weapons on the  rough streets of her hometown.Tricia Bishop, deputy editorial page editor for the Baltimore paper,  explained how billboards advertisements for guns and everyday Americans carrying  them around made her sick.“I’m less afraid of the criminals wielding guns in Baltimore… than I am by  those permitted gun owners,” Bishop  said.She says this because she believes as a middle-class white woman, she’s  shielded from her city’s criminal element but, in her opinion, she’s not  protected from...

Another email arrived the other day from a citizen who blames Democrats for everything bad about Baltimore — for the poverty and the potholes, the homicides and homelessness, the high property taxes and the trash in the Inner Harbor. These assertions have been arriving in a moderate flow since the April riot, framed between harsh criticism of Baltimore's Democratic mayor and soaring praise for Maryland's Republican governor who "saved the city."The most recent email came from an "interested friend" — few writers of these letters sign their names — who declared: "Democrats have had Baltimore in its grip for 50...

On a regular old Monday, the Web site of the Baltimore Sun might draw a million pageviews. This past Monday? Ten million, according to Baltimore Sun marketing director Renee Mutchnik. That’s what happens when perhaps the biggest domestic issue of the past year — the relationship between police and marginalized communities — comes to town. Baltimore has convulsed following the funeral of Freddie Gray, who was arrested in West Baltimore on April 12 and died a week later of spinal injuries. And while national media have sent camera crews and correspondents and the like, the hometown daily has more than...

The Rev. Jesse Jackson on Thursday urged the people of Baltimore to continue their peaceful protest and expressed his faith in the leadership of Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. "People have shown great restraint. I hope they maintain that restraint," Jackson said. "The worst thing that could happen is people are indifferent to this killing, and do nothing. ... The police wagon became a tomb."

Susan Reimer is a columnist for the the Baltimore Sun- a paper so liberal that Chris Mathews of MSNBC once laughed when a Philadelphia paper was incorrectly called centrist and he commented "About the only paper more liberal in America is the Baltimore Sun!" Her latest piece for the Sun is an article entitled "The moral consequence of watching football" In her column, she asks: "Is it morally acceptable to watch football when it is clear that the game is irretrievably harmful to those who play it?" and "How can you watch football when you know — and the players...

The ax is about to drop at newspapers owned by the Tribune Company, according to a report by the firm’s own Los Angeles Times. The Times says the company, which also owns The Chicago Tribune, Baltimore Sun, Hartford Courant, Orlando Sentinel, and South Florida Sun Sentinel, “is reviewing operations in an effort that will likely result in staff reductions.” …

Population increase is a natural sign of political health. By that measure, Baltimore has been sick a long time. Six straight decades of depopulation have reduced the city by a third. The "experts" assert that immigration is the key to a population rebound. In his Persian Letters, Montesquieu reflects on the fate of the great cities of Constantinople and Isfahan: "People, attracted for a thousand reasons, ought to flock to them from every direction. Yet they are decaying internally and would long since have perished, had not their sovereigns in almost every century caused entire new nations to enter and...

The Obama administration’s crackdown on leaks to the press has snared a high-profile conviction of an FBI linguist, who was sentenced to 20 months in prison Monday after pleading guilty to giving classified information to a blogger. The sentence for Shamai Leibowitz is likely to become the longest ever served by a government employee accused of passing national security secrets to a member of the media. His case represents only the third known conviction in U.S. history for a government official or contractor providing classified information to the press. And it reflects a surprising development: President Barack Obama’s Justice Department...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) - A former senior executive at the National Security Agency was charged Thursday with lying and obstruction of justice in an investigation of leaks of classified information to a newspaper. Federal prosecutors said Thomas Drake, 52, served as a source for many articles about the NSA in an unidentified newspaper, including articles that contained classified information.</p>

It was the moment of greatest peril for then-Sen. Barack Obama’s political career. In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign. The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public –...