Media mogul David Smith shocked the city with the purchase of The Baltimore Sun last year. He promised radical change and exhorted his new staff to “go make me some money.”

It’s been a rocky road ever since.

The city’s largest newspaper has seen a significant drop in its readership. Average circulation of its Sunday paper fell by nearly half between 2023 and 2024, according to industry figures. During most months in 2024, The Sun also had fewer unique visitors to its website than in the year before.

At least 20 journalists have left the paper in the last year — including its best-known columnist and a beloved obituary writer — with several of them citing problems with the political slant of the stories presented under its new ownership. In particular, they pointed to The Sun’s use of stories from Fox45, a TV station owned by Smith’s right-leaning Sinclair Broadcast Group.

Many watchers of the Pulitzer Prize-winning paper are now bemoaning its politically conservative turn and criticizing Smith’s leadership as woefully destructive to the newspaper’s nearly 200-year-old legacy. Smith’s changes at The Sun also have drawn critical coverage in Rolling Stone magazine and from the Poynter Institute, a journalism education organization.

“They didn’t just become conservative, they became MAGA. They became pro-Trump MAGA,” said former Sun media critic David Zurawik, referring to Smith’s takeover and President Trump’s mantra to “Make America Great Again.”

In some ways, the Smith-owned Sun could be well-positioned to take advantage of a close relationship with a large broadcast network and an increased focus on hot-button issues, including crime and immigration.

David Marks, a Republican Baltimore County Council member, applauded Smith’s purchase, saying “there are clearly more diverse opinions” in the newspaper today. And Rev. Alvin Hathaway, a friend of Smith’s, credited his former high school classmate for a belief that he can create “a better government, a better community.” Hathaway also lauded Smith for a “shrewd” decision to move The Sun’s newsroom from rented space downtown to a building Smith owns in Fells Point.

Smith has remained largely silent about what he hopes to do with the privately held Sun in the long term. Through a Sinclair spokesperson, Smith declined an interview request.

Declining numbers

The drop-off in Sun readership since Smith’s purchase has been substantial.

Trif Alatzas, the Sun’s publisher and editor-in-chief, told Poynter that The Sun had “roughly 230,000 print and online subscribers” in mid-2024.

Its print newspaper had an average Sunday circulation of 76,474, and an average weekday circulation of 27,926 for the year that ended September 2023, according to data from the Alliance for Audited Media.

A year later, those numbers dropped sharply.

Its average Sunday circulation was 42,522, a 44% decline. The average weekday circulation fell to 17,594, or 37% lower. (The AAM figures in 2024 are based on the six-month period ending September of that year.)

“I’m not easily shocked anymore, but yeah, that’s pretty startling,” said Rick Edmonds, a media business analyst with Poynter.

Industry data show The Sun also had fewer unique visitors to its website month over month in the year after Smith bought the paper, except for March and April, which coincided with the Key Bridge collapse and its aftermath.

In February 2024, the month after the sale, The Sun saw 41% fewer unique visitors to its website compared to February 2023, according to data from Comscore.

Ken Doctor, a news industry analyst and CEO of Lookout Local, said the numbers for The Sun’s print circulation between 2021 and 2023 seem in line with the “industry average,” but that the numbers from 2024 show “a huge drop-off.”

Similarly sized newspapers to The Sun — The Denver Post, the Indianapolis Star, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the San Jose Mercury News — also saw year-over-year declines in their average Sunday print circulation numbers, according to data from the Alliance for Audited Media.

But The Sun was the only paper to see a year-over-year drop of above 40%. (The Sun has not reported to AAM the number of its digital-only subscribers as some other news organizations have, according to the organization.)

Juan Manuel Benítez, a professor of professional practice at Columbia University, said declining numbers at The Sun were part of a larger trend.

“We’re in the attention economy, and local news has not been able to figure out how to play this new game, unfortunately,” Benítez said.

Tensions over The Sun’s future have bubbled up in public between Smith and his employees. In December, Smith was confronted by Sun union members outside a restaurant.

As first reported by The Baltimore Brew, Smith told Amy Davis, a Sun photographer and union mobilizer who retired this month, that the paper was struggling, saying The Sun “lost more than half your subscribers in the last three years.” In an interview, Davis said she felt Smith did not listen to her points about giving reporters a fair wage, and was instead interested in trying “to one-up me.”

However the future of the newspaper plays out, the purchase of The Sun — the price has never been disclosed publicly — has already helped cement Smith’s position as one of the most powerful media figures in the city and the nation.

Smith is executive chairman of the publicly traded Sinclair Broadcast Group, which owns or operates nearly 200 TV stations across the country. Sinclair is based in Hunt Valley and Fox45 is considered its flagship TV station.

The value of Sinclair’s stock shrunk in recent years, from a peak of about $55 per share in 2019 to about $14 in early March. In January, the company signaled a possibility for new growth, announcing moves to set the stage for acquiring more TV stations.

After Smith and his co-owner, conservative commentator Armstrong Williams, purchased the paper, The Sun and Smith’s media empire became more integrated as stories from Fox45 and the Sinclair National Desk started appearing in the newspaper. That outraged many Sun staffers, according to interviews with more than a half-dozen current and former Sun journalists.

But Alatzas, The Sun’s top editor and publisher, told Poynter that Smith’s acquisition of the newspaper has allowed it to invest in and grow its business.

“They have many ideas on how we can innovate and make changes to bring in more readers, and they’re willing to make the investments needed,” Alatzas said. The newspaper has eight open positions listed for editors and reporters. (Alatzas did not respond to requests for comment for this story).

Exerting influence

Smith’s influence on The Sun’s operations has been significant, according to current and former staffers.

Shortly after the newspaper’s sale in January 2024, Smith met with the newsroom and insulted the quality of the journalism produced by The Sun, telling specific journalists he had “no idea what you do.”

Several current and former Sun journalists criticized the paper’s new focus under Smith on crowds of young people spending time in Fells Point over the summer. They said the coverage created a misperception that crime was out of control.

“It was just a bunch of kids standing around, hanging out,” said one current staffer who asked not to be identified for fear of retaliation. “To see The Sun was pushing a narrative [that crime is up], making a mountain out of a molehill, it’s concerning.”

From his new perch as newspaper owner, Smith has also pursued his own political agenda, including writing opinion pieces in the Sun to support an unsuccessful effort to shrink the size of the Baltimore City Council.

Smith, who spends time in the paper’s new office, does not regularly discuss story ideas or coverage with reporters, according to current and former staff. Rather, he meets with Tricia Bishop, The Sun’s managing editor, and story ideas trickle down to other editors.

Bishop told the Poynter media site that her newspaper’s editors review all republished content to meet The Sun’s standards. She did not respond to interview requests.

Christine Condon, the outgoing chair of The Sun’s union who is leaving her job at the newspaper today, said the paper has endured a “painful transformation” with staff departures.

Despite the conflict, the newspaper’s union, which represents about 35 staffers in the newsroom of about 50, and the company have started negotiating a new labor agreement, the first such talks since 2007. Reporters and editors at sister publications, including the Capital Gazette and smaller community papers, account for an additional staff of about 30, according to the company’s website.

Exiting staff

A year after his takeover, The Sun’s new owner continues to weather criticism from his own staff. That includes Dan Rodricks, a now-former columnist who wrote about the city for decades.

Rodricks did not respond to requests for comment, but said on WYPR in late January that he “didn’t feel so proud” working for The Sun anymore. He resigned that same month.

“This past year, the changes that came to the newspaper made me very uncomfortable about continuing to work at The Sun,” Rodricks told radio host Tom Hall. Rodricks said he became broadly uncomfortable with ownership having an “influence” on news coverage, but did not get into specifics.

Many of those who have left publicly or privately cited frustration and concern with the editorial direction the new owners were pushing.

Angela Roberts, a reporter who resigned in September, said she tried to be optimistic after Smith and Williams bought the paper, because she really liked working at The Sun. But it got to a point, Roberts said, “where it just made me really sad to see my byline alongside stories from the Sinclair national desk.”

Three top editors left the paper in the first year since the purchase, including longtime Managing Editor Sam Davis, who publicly announced his retirement in June. Reached in January, Davis declined to comment. A number of former Sun reporters and editors have also joined the Banner.

Fred Rasmussen, an obituary writer who had been at The Sun for more than 50 years, resigned at the end of January, citing in part what he called The Sun’s new overemphasis on Baltimore’s ills.

He recalled a March 2024 meeting with Williams and other reporters. Rasmussen said Williams waved off reader feedback and dismissed Rasmussen’s own attempts to form better relationships with Black funeral homes in Baltimore.

Rasmussen said Alatzas, The Sun’s editor, offered him a retirement party — which Rasmussen declined.

“I didn’t want to have any retirement party,” Rasmussen said. “I’m not going to sit here and make nice.”

The Banner’s Greg Morton and Lee Sanderlin contributed to this article.