Newsroom

Unionized employees in The Sun's newsroom, advertising and other departments overwhelmingly approved a new four-year contract last night, averting the possibility of a strike at a time the paper is coping with declining revenue and increased competition. Representatives from management and the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild struck a tentative agreement early yesterday on a contract covering about 480 employees. The deal was contingent on union members ratifying it last night. They did so on a voice vote.

Gary Cohn and Will Englund, reporters for The Sun, won a Pulitzer Prize in investigative reporting yesterday for a series of stories exposing the extraordinary hazards to workers and the environment caused by the little-known industry that scraps old ships.Their sweeping account of migrant workers maimed and killed in sloppy and unregulated shipbreaking operations from Baltimore to India prompted the U.S. Navy to drop a plan to send retired warships overseas for scrapping.The stories also sparked congressional hearings and prompted the Defense Department to order a study on how naval vessels can be scrapped safely.

"Ink," the new sitcom starring Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, finally steams into its prime-time port tonight (8: 30, WJZ Channel 13), five weeks and $5 million over-budget and with an army of critics ready to paint the words "CBS Disaster" across its troubled bow.Hold the paint, boys and girls. It ain't a great series by a long shot, but sitcom doctor Diane English has managed to craft a vessel that at least can float. In fact, it might even sail if Danson can further loosen up and let himself go with the persona English seems to be trying to create for him, sort of a cross between Sam Malone and Murphy Brown.

Baby Face was such a pest.Reporters in a Raleigh newsroom in 1984 took his clockwork calls, heard his baby voice, and fibbed about sending someone out to cover his "news" event. We made no such plans that year.No one took him seriously. He was tagged a community nut forever trolling for media attention. Who was this guy anyway? Who is this Christian? Who goes around making a big deal about being a Christian anyway? A newsroom was certainly no place for such talk!We religiously covered the mandatory cycle of North Carolina stories: Jesse Helms wins Senate seat again; tobacco farmers urge higher price supports; Dean Smith's Tar Heels advance to Final Four.

ISTANBUL, Turkey -- In a bright modern newsroom in the center of Istanbul, Gulsen Yuksel, 31, cooly contemplated the risks of being a journalist in Turkey."

ATLANTA -- When Time Warner chairman Gerald Levin and vice chairman Ted Turner symbolically launch CNN/SI at 8 tonight, they'll open the next chapter in the battle for a piece of the burgeoning sports news and information industry.The hard work of turning the latest of the 24-hour, all-sports-news networks into a viable part of the market will begin and continue here in a newly constructed, 26,000-square-foot studio and newsroom just off the main CNN newsroom."I can't wait to get this thing going," said Jim Walton, a CNN senior vice president and the executive in charge of this hybrid channel, which blends the immediacy of CNN, the first all-news network, with the journalistic heft of Sports Illustrated, one of the leading sports magazines on the planet.

A couple of notable repeats tonight on ABC include a series finale and a long-awaited wedding. In addition, another new series premieres from Paramount, purporting to show the behind-camera machinations of a television news operation.* "Live Shot" (8 p.m.-10 p.m., WNUV, Channel 54) -- Move over, "Murphy Brown." This new series is set inside a television newsroom -- for dramatic purposes, not comedy. David Birney, who stars as anchorman of a Los Angeles station, says satire is a strong element.

The 85-year-old Baltimore Evening Sun, once described as "the rollicking son of the staid old lady, the morning Sun," will cease publication Sept. 15, the publisher said yesterday.The evening paper's circulation has fallen by 100,000 copies since 1987, the victim of changing reader habits, the company said. But the loss will be offset by a thorough redesign and expansion of the morning Sun, which has been enjoying strong circulation gains, said Mary Junck, publisher and chief executive officer of The Baltimore Sun Co. "It was an extremely difficult decision to make, although I think many people in the community have expected it for some time," she said.

HAVRE DE GRACE -- Journalism about journalists bores almost everyone, except in Washington, where The New Republic has recently given a lot of important people serious heartburn by publishing a long earnest piece about racial tensions on the news staff of the Washington Post.Though tedious to read, the dull story has had interesting repercussions. A galvanic response by top Post executives made it clear that the piece had struck a nerve, and drew the attention of some of us who might otherwise have passed it by.The magazine article itself, by Ruth Shalit, said nothing Post staffers of all races haven't gossiped, argued and even laughed about with each other for years.

THIS just in, hot off the presses of Presstime, the magazine of the Newspaper Association of America:"Traditionalist, don't read this. You won't get it."Calling a managing editor a news leader and the newsroom the Reader Customer Unit? What next? The electronic newspaper?"Get over it, says Pam Fine, news leader at the Star Tribune in Minneapolis. 'When I first heard [the name], I thought, "Here's a place that thinks names are important to creating a new culture." "Fine. . . took the No. 2 editorial job at the Star Tribune last April.

A Baltimore police spokesman has been suspended as the department looks into an allegation that he inadvertently sent a nude photo of a woman to a television station. Officer Troy Harris, a nine-year veteran who has served as one of the department's spokesmen since 2002, was suspended Friday by the director of the public affairs section and the police commissioner, the agency confirmed. Officials declined to comment further, saying that the issue is a personnel matter. Sources said Harris was trying to send a mug shot of a criminal suspect to a newsroom e-mail account at WBAL-TV on Thursday night and attached a cell phone photo of a woman that had been saved to the hard drive of his city-issued computer.

Before I headed to my first real - i.e., paying - newspaper job years ago, my parents bought me a used car. I can still remember getting behind the wheel, giddy and exhilarated to be on the road and starting the life I always envisioned for myself as a big-city reporter. It was a Pontiac, and I was driving to Detroit. I thought about that car this week for the first time in years, when the news came that the once-mighty and now-faltering General Motors was killing its Pontiac line, unloading it along with thousands of employees and hundreds of dealerships in a desperate attempt to stave off bankruptcy.

Robert Blau, The Baltimore Sun's managing editor, the No. 2 position in the newsroom, announced yesterday he is leaving the paper Friday. Blau, 49, said the decision was personal and one that he had been considering for the past several months. "It just seems like a good time and good opportunity to take a step back and take stock," Blau said. "The fact of the matter is, I couldn't have liked a newspaper more than this one despite some of the challenges we all face. It has an enormously talented staff and a very engaged readership.

The Baltimore Sun Media Group, which publishes The Sun and community newspapers, said yesterday it has eliminated about 100 jobs to further cut costs in an industry grappling with eroding advertising revenue and circulation. The Sun's newsroom is losing 55 people, or about 20 percent of its current work force. That consists of 43 who are leaving by voluntary buyout, 11 by layoff and one by transfer to the community newspapers unit, according to the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild, which represents nearly 400 Sun workers.

When I joined The Sun 21 years ago, there was still at least one person in the newsroom who had worked here when H.L. Mencken did. He used to use his pencils down to the stub, she told me. "Wow," I remember thinking, not so much about his thriftiness with office supplies - although we did receive a memo about that yesterday - but just the fact that I actually knew someone who knew Mencken. Maybe it's the same in other workplaces - surely there are people in town who knew someone who knew someone who knew the actual Alex.

Editor Bureau chief: Lauren Brown, 443-482-3407 or lauren.brown@baltsun.com Reporters Courts, city of Annapolis: Nicole Fuller, 443-482-3403 or nicole.fuller@baltsun.com Schools: Ruma Kumar, 443-482-3402 or ruma.kumar@baltsun.com Police/fire: Justin Fenton, 443-482-3408 or justin.fenton@baltsun.com News tips To reach the Anne Arundel newsroom, call 443-482-3400 weekdays during business hours. Phone messages may be left on one of the above extensions. The bureau's address is 60 West St., Suite 400, Annapolis 21401, and the fax is 410-269-4224.

Editor Bureau chief: Lauren Brown, 443-482-3407 or lauren.brown@baltsun.com Reporters Courts, city of Annapolis: Nicole Fuller, 443-482-3403 or Nicole.fuller@baltsun.com Schools: Ruma Kumar, 443-482-3402 or ruma.kumar@baltsun.com Police/Fire: Justin Fenton, 443-482-3408 or justin.fenton@baltsun.com News tips To reach the Anne Arundel newsroom, call 443-482-3400 weekdays during business hours. Phone messages may be left on one of the above extensions. The bureau's address is 60 West St., Suite 400, Annapolis 21401, and the fax is 410-269-4224.

Writing about the past four seasons of HBO's The Wire has been one of the great pleasures of this job. But reviewing the fifth and final season, which begins next Sunday on the premium cable channel, is more of a mixed blessing. It's not that the series has suddenly taken a drastic turn away from its epic and compelling exploration of life in a downsized Millennial America. Steeped in a dense and seething urban sociology, the Baltimore-based series is still one of the most daring dramas in the history of the medium.

NEW YORK -- Negotiators reached an "agreement in principle" yesterday for guarding the editorial independence of The Wall Street Journal if its parent, Dow Jones & Co., is sold to News Corp., people briefed on the talks said. That clears the way for negotiation of price and other remaining issues. But some people close to the talks cautioned that certain details on editorial independence remained to be settled, and said they were reluctant to call it an agreement yet. The tentative accord has not been shown to the Bancroft family, owners of a controlling interest in Dow Jones, who can block any deal, according to a person close to the family who, like others who spoke about the agreement, was granted anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss it. People close to the company and the family said the Bancrofts would be formally briefed only when there is a tentative deal on all issues - newsroom control, price and everything else - that the Dow Jones board and News Corp.

Unionized employees in The Sun's newsroom, advertising and other departments overwhelmingly approved a new four-year contract last night, averting the possibility of a strike at a time the paper is coping with declining revenue and increased competition. Representatives from management and the Washington-Baltimore Newspaper Guild struck a tentative agreement early yesterday on a contract covering about 480 employees. The deal was contingent on union members ratifying it last night. They did so on a voice vote.