Skip to main content

A Day at the Races



I offer you my most sincere apologies. I overslept and my brain doesn’t appear to be on straight yet. I’m working on a piece about my visit to the Howard County Innovation Center yesterday, but that will need a bit more time to firm up.

In the meantime, I offer you my favorite tweet from this year’s Howard County Fair:

During my early writing days, the newspaper I worked for in Howard County sponsored the fair. We had to volunteer, so I did the announcements. I announced the pig races in the most dead panned way possible.

I was curious.

Did you work for Patuxent Publishing? That’s a great story!

 He responded:

I did. Sports writer for the Howard County Times/Columbia Flier from 01-06!

The writer in question, Matt Palmer, is now a media relations director. I have no knowledge of why he isn’t working as a journalist anymore but it’s not hard to guess. Today Patuxent Publishing is but a memory, having been devoured by a series of bigger fishes. Our local paper has a staff so tiny that one can’t even imagine them being able to volunteer at the Howard County Fair.

Pay is so appallingly low and the work environment so generally demoralizing that local news writers  have unionized in order to use collective bargaining to improve their lot. Right now Baltimore Sun writer Cody Boteler is in Chicago as a representative of the Baltimore Sun Guild. The opening offer by Tribune Publishing is both insulting and unlivable. Among other things, they propose to charge union members for parking at their own workplace, while non union employees won’t have to pay.

Local reporter Erin Logan shares:

$29k. Starting salary at our company is $29k. A few months ago, Tribune paid $56 million special cash dividends to shareholders. 


It’s not just salary issues at stake here. It’s also working conditions, how employees with greater years of service will be treated, how many days and hours you can be required to work. All those extra hours add up if you’re also balancing a second job just to get by and need to get to a local food bank so your family can eat.

If you want to learn more, follow Baltimore Sun Guild on Twitter. (And don’t forget Chesapeake News Guild.) If you want to help, well:

WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR US?

1. Follow & share the @BaltSunGuild Facebook page and Twitter handle, and help spread our message.
2. Tell other media entities to cover our bargaining journey.
3. Send letters of support for us to:
c/o Trif Alatzas
300 E Cromwell St. 
Baltimore, MD 21230

What big corporations are doing to local journalism ought to be against the law. The experience for journalists is not unlike running in one of those Howard Fair pig races. Even the winners will probably end up as somebody else’s bacon.

We rely on local journalists to tell our stories. They need our help to be able to do that. 


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Teacher Gifts

Today is the last day of school before the Winter Break. It’s a good time to remember the far-reaching nature of our public school system. You may not have children. You may have sent your children to independent schools. It matters not. You will be impacted one way or another. Yesterday I read a long thread on Facebook about several waves of illness in the schools right now. There’s influenza A and norovirus, I believe. And of course there’s COVID. Apparently in some individual schools the rate of illness is high enough for school admin to notify parents.  When I was little the acceptable holiday gift for a teacher was one of those lovely floral handkerchief squares. (I don’t know what it was for male teachers. They were rare in my elementary years.) These days the range of teacher gifts is wider and I have fond memories of Target gift cards which I have written about before. I think it’s safe to say that giving one’s teacher Influenza, norovirus, or COVID is not the ideal holiday...
1 comment
Read more

Getting Fresh

One of my favorite days in the Spring comes when this year’s list of Farmer’s Markets is released. That happened this week. New this year are markets in Old Ellicott City and the “Merriweather Market” which, according to the address, will be located here . I mistakenly thought at first glance that it was in the new-construction part of the Merriweather District. I find the name confusing considering its actual location. I’m going to guess that this market is an initiative of the Howard Hughes Corporation because the name seems chosen more for branding purposes than anything else.  Alas, the market in Maple Lawn is gone. The thread on the markets on the County Executive’s FB page will provide you with quite the education in who actually runs the Farmers Markets vs what people often think is going on. Short answer: they are not  chosen nor run by the county. Each market is an independent entity, sometimes started by community volunteers, other times supported by local businesses...
1 comment
Read more

They Can Wait

This is not a typical Saturday post. That’s because, in my community, it’s not a typical Saturday.  Oakland Mills High School, after years of deferred repair, needs massive renovation. It’s pretty simple: when you don’t fix a problem it gets bigger. The school system itself said the the OMHS school building was  "no longer conducive to learning" back in 2018.  2018 .  But Thursday the Boad of Education voted to push it out of the lineup of important projects which will be given the go-ahead to proceed soonest.  In my opinion it’s a terrible decision and sets a dangerous precedent. To explain, here’s the advocacy letter I sent in support of Oakland Mills High School. I was rather proud of it. I am writing to ask you to proceed with needed renovation at Oakland Mills High School in the most timely and comprehensive manner humanly possible. I have read the letter sent to you by the Oakland Mills Community Association and I am in complete agreement. You are extremel...
1 comment
Read more