A sad day for The Baltimore Sun. Soon, the newspaper will not even be printed in Baltimore or even Maryland! Under the proposal, the newspaper would be printed in Wilmington, Delaware by a Gannett printing plant that also prints USA Today, along with several other newspapers. The recently sold Baltimore Sun building at Sun Park in Port Covington would be largely vacant after this move and likely eventually torn down by Kevin Plank down the road. One hundred or more union workers will lose their jobs as a result of this decision.

Baltimore Sun Media proposes moving printing of newspapers to Delaware, laying off 100+ workers

By CHRISTOPHER DINSMORE
BALTIMORE SUN | NOV 30, 2021 AT 8:49 PM

Baltimore Sun Media is considering a plan to move the printing of its newspapers from Baltimore to a printing plant in Wilmington, Delaware, owned by the newspaper there.

The shift, proposed to occur by the end of January, likely would result in the loss of more than 100 jobs, most of them full-time.

Sun officials met with affected employees Tuesday to inform them of the proposal to shut down the Sun Park printing plant in South Baltimore. The Baltimore Sun opened Sun Park in 1992, but the circulation of the print newspaper has declined in recent years, even as digital subscriptions have grown, and the plant’s size dwarfs The Sun’s needs.

Under the proposal, The News Journal, a Wilmington paper owned by Gannett, would print and insert The Baltimore Sun, The Capital of Annapolis, the Carroll County Times and other affiliated publications.

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The Sun would join a growing list of newspapers that have closed their printing plants and moved printing to other publications’ presses for similar reasons, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Tampa Bay Times and The Kansas City Star, all of which shut down their printing operations in 2021.

Earlier this year, The Sun’s parent company, Chicago-based Tribune Publishing, was acquired by Alden Global Capital, a hedge fund that has been accumulating newspapers for years and has a reputation for cutting its costs to remain profitable.

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Christopher Dinsmore
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Christopher Dinsmore is The Baltimore Sun's senior editor for business + health. Chris joined the Sun from The Virginian-Pilot in Norfolk, Va., where he was a business editor and writer for nearly 20 years. A graduate of the University of Virginia and Northwestern University, Chris rides bikes and stands on soccer sidelines in his spare time.