Baltimore Media Roundup June 5th -- "Does Nurice have a react quote?..."

"i bet if we locked a bunch of monkeys in a room, chained to typewriters, we could come up with better crap than this..."

I'm going to have to concede that I'll have to start doing this column/blogfeature more often, or else it's going to get irrelevant, but work's been busy, with lots of ink required of me, plus a trip to Vegas, so I apologize for my dereliction of duty. Here are my thoughts of late on the great, glorious world of Smalltimore media.

This article in today's Sun, written by my colleague and acquaintance, the charming Ms. Lynn Anderson, caused me to have a Wire Season 5 moment. Remember that scene where Gus is looking at the City Council agenda and he recognizes the name of a drug dealer that the city is buying land from? That's the kind of institutional memory the Sun has that I don't. In the case of Lynn's article today, somebody at the city Board of Estimates meeting on Wednesday (at which I was present) recognized Gil Sapperstein, the notably corrupt Baltimore developer (he did time for stealing money from Baltimore's school system, of all places), by face, then figured out that the resident agent address for the company selling land to the city to build a supermarket in Liberty Heights (much needed, by the way), is the same as his home address in Baltimore County. I guess one leads to another -- recognizing Sapperstein, asking him why he's there, etc. -- but any way you slice it, it's a bit despicable that the city still does business with this bum, so kudos to Lynn and the Sun for spotting it.

Enough fawning over the legacy paper, already, and on to the next corruption story. Last week, when the feds raided state senator Ulysses S. Currie's home and the offices of Shopper's supermarket, two stories ran out of the Annapolis bureaus of both the Sun and the Washington Post that I think illustrate the differences in resources between these two papers.

Now, just to be clear, I know some of the people involved with the writing of the Sun piece on Currie, and would never disparage them -- they are talented reporters who normally do really exemplary work -- but in a side-by-side comparison of the two accounts, as breaking news stories, the Post blows the Sun out of the water.

Here's the Sun's version, here's the Post's.

At the end of the Sun article, here's what we know: Currie's house was raided by the FBI, and it has something to do with his work as an "outside consultant" for Shoppers, the grocery chain. We don't know why he is being investigated, and he, his lawyer, and other politicians are keeping quiet about it. In addition, Currie, as chairman of the senate budget and taxation committee, is very powerful, and he's not the first Maryland lawmaker to be probed by the fuzz. We learn that the Currie's are quiet, their house is shuttered, they driver American- and British-made cars, and we get some poetry about a rusty basketball hoop in the driveway. Then a highly informative neighbor called Mickey Bailey says to us, "This is a lot more interesting than today's 'Dr. Phil' episode"--OMG, obvi.

But see--it's not. Because the whole article fails to answer the fundamental question posed by the news item: Why is a powerful Maryland lawmaker being probed by the FBI? This is really effing serious! Who cares about some unemployed couch potato neighbor and the history of Maryland corruption? This is breaking news, people, not some sort of third-day reaction piece!

Enter the Post. They basically got the same answers from everyone ("No comment,") except for a more colourful quote from the lawmaker about how his lawyer told him not even to talk to his dog, but then they actually went and did some digging at a level so basic that it showed how much more solid their bureau chief is than the Sun's. They looked into state legislature ethics rules and found that if Currie makes money as a consultant--well shit, he's got to report it. And guess what? He didn't. And that seems to be the most likely reason he is getting fingered...

From the Post:

Currie did not report receiving income from Shoppers in any of his three most recent filings with the State Ethics Commission nor has he ever filed forms with the state indicating that he might face a conflict of interest with legislation dealing with the grocery chain. Under state ethics law, legislators are required to report sources of outside income, including income from consulting activities, and are expected to report even the appearance of a conflict of interest on pending legislation.

Meyer, the spokeswoman for Supervalu, said in response to a question about Currie's employment by the company that he was an "outside consultant." She said his responsibilities included "various consulting operations."

Asked later to confirm that he was paid, she said she could provide no additional information. She would not say how long Currie has been a consultant for the company nor what issues he has worked on.

The instructions for the State Ethics Commission financial disclosure, which lawmakers must file yearly, lists income earned from "individual consulting activities" as an example of compensation that should be disclosed.

Without confirmation of what the whole thing is about, the Sun caught up the next day, reporting, amid the same kinds of doors slamming in their faces, that Currie had failed to report his earnings from Shoppers, a company that has contributed to his campaigns in the past. A few days later, they added this nugget in follow-up story, which I think is very salient, well-oriented, locally, and good reportage:

The state has pledged $1.8 million to West Baltimore's Mondawmin Mall, where a Shoppers Food store opened in November. That money would go to the mall's owner, General Growth Properties, for renovation of the property and has not been appropriated, Glenn-Hood said.

But still, I contend that the two initial reports really demonstrate that the Post is better equipped to deal with breaking news (they did, incidentally, have 3 reporters on it, compared to the Sun's 2). And to add insult to injury, the Post demonstrated how little they give a shit about Maryland, by burying their superior article in the regional section of the website, well past the front page (I didn't see the print edition). *sigh*

In other news, the Examiner has gotten really over-the-top New York Post style lately, running covers like this one:



I thought the Sinai Hospital front-page ad, right below the super-bold headline was pretty hilarious, though. Have I just not been paying attention, or is this whole screaming headlines thing new for the Ex? Maybe they'll mount an even bigger shrine to old Rupert by referring to Hezbollah as "HEZ" and putting it in 60-pt on the front page -- "HEZ AIRSTRIKES KILL 3". That'd be sweet.