The Sun's Orbit

On any other paper the news would probably have rated Page One. But the Baltimore Sun is not any other paper: it is the Baltimore Sun. Consequently, the word was passed to Sun readers last week in a dignified "Announcement" on the editorial page: "After nine years as president of the A. S. Abell Company and 50 years of association with the Sunpapers, Mr. William F. Schmick Sr. has offered his resignation to the board of directors and asked to be retired. Mr. William F.

Schmick Jr., who has served as executive vice president since 1953, has been chosen to succeed his father as president." So saying, the Sun dropped the subject, confident that Baltimoreans, accustomed to the unhurried. 123-year continuum of their favorite newspaper, would accept the change in command without losing any sleep. Baltimoreans did.

The fact is that in Baltimore, Schmicks may come and Schmicks may go, but the Sun abides like the oysters in Chesapeake Bay. Residents set such store by the Sun-papers that they accept the Sun's word as though coming from above, follow its paternal advice in running the city, and generally vote just the way the Sun tells them to, or, like disobedient children, just the opposite way.

No Mingling. Beamed strictly at Baltimore, the morning Sun (circ. 198,204) and the evening Sun (circ. 216,261) nonetheless orbit the world: the Szwpapers have one of the largest newspaper bureaus in Washington (ten men), keep staffers in London, Moscow, Rome and Bonn, and often, rather than rely on wire-service copy, send their own men after the big national news, wherever it breaks. The only time the morning Sun ever bought a syndicated political columnist, it killed his copy and thereby kept it out of town for years; the columnist was Drew Pearson, whom the Sun had fired in 1932. The evening Sun, established 50 years ago, is separated from the older morning Sun by an editorial rivalry so intense that the two staffs never collaborate on duty.

The Sun was founded in 1837 by an itinerant printer with the resounding name of Arunah Shepherdson Abell.

Against entrenched competition--six daily, nine weekly and two monthly papers --Abell prospered by offering the only penny paper in the field, and by a stubborn insistence on telling the truth in an era when most newspapers were for hire.

No Soliciting. While Abell lived, no Sun reporter ever got a byline, no advertisement was ever solicited--merchants had to walk in with the copy and the cash.

Abell was willing to catalogue municipal flaws ("Anybody in want of a dead pig can find one in Calvert Street"), but he largely ignored politicians as low types ranking somewhat beneath Baltimore's criminal element.

Abell dreamed of a time when Baltimore would be the nation's biggest seaport and the Sun the most famous paper in the U.S. Baltimore never made it, but long after Abell's death in 1888, it seemed for a while that the Sun might actually achieve his dream: in the halcyon days of Henry Louis Mencken and Frank R. Kent, for years the dean of U.S. political columnists, the name of the Sun was second to none.

But it was not to be, for Baltimore itself has natural limitations, and the Sun, above all else, is a paper of, by and for Baltimore. Consigned by geography to a pleasant pocket 35 miles north of Washington, the Baltimorean's pride is parochial. Living in tidy rows of wall-to-wall brick houses, he emerges with his neighbors to scrub identical marble steps until they gleam. To visitors he boasts of Johns Hopkins University, the Baltimore Colts, the Baltimore Orioles, the Baltimore hot crab sandwich, and the Baltimore Sun.

No Stopping. On this scene, the Sun sheds its reassuring light. Although its new steward, Bill Schmick, Jr., 46, will take full charge of both the business and editorial sides, he is not likely to revolutionize its glow. Self-described as "independent-Democrat," the Sun has in fact supported Republicans for President ever since 1940.

Local problems get much of the play on the Sun editorial page, as, for example, last week: "A burst of fine weather makes everyone think about picnics and boat trips and swimming ahead. It makes people who care for parks and roadsides think of litter and filth." Although the evening Sun's circulation lags behind that of its opposition, Hearst's News-Post (230,442), the Sunpapers stand far ahead in both prestige and profits. "Everything in Baltimore," says the Sun, "revolves around the Sun." It is likely to keep revolving for a long while.

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