Baltimore Sun looks to non-profit status to stay afloat amid coronavirus threat

The Baltimore Sun has just won the Pulitzer prize for local reporting, despite years of job cuts and as the coronavirus pandemic appears set to ravage the nation’s journalism sector even more. But now as media experts warn the coronavirus is an “extinction-level event” for news organizations, a coalition of Baltimore-based philanthropists is hoping to turn the Sun into a non-profit, and avoid that fate.

Behind the scenes a local group is hoping to buy the 183-year-old newspaper in an attempt to free the Sun from further downsizing and cement its future.

The Baltimore Sun is owned by Tribune Publishing. Alden Global Capital, a New York-based hedge fund infamous for purchasing, then gutting, newspapers across the US, owns a 32% stake in Tribune Publishing. “The Sun is one of the most important civic institutions that really belongs to everyone in Baltimore,” said Matthew Gallagher, president and chief of the Goldseker Foundation, one of the leaders of the “Save our Sun” effort which hopes to buy the newspaper.

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Source: The Guardian