Newsroom

Because of a telephone system upgrade Sunday, May 9, the newsroom might not be able to receive phone calls until 6 p.m. Readers with questions about circulation and other customer service issues can still call 888-539-1280 until noon.

The folks at "House of Cards" sure love the Baltimore area. Not only is the majority of the political thriller filmed in and around the city (and, full disclosure, in The Baltimore Sun newsroom), now the show's head honcho, Beau Willimon, is slated to come to Towson University on Wednesday (April 24) to discuss how he developed the addictive series. According to a Towson University press release, Willimon will speak at 12:30 p.m. Wednesday in Van Bokkelen Hall, Room 204. The event is free and open to the public.

Mary J. Corey, whose personal warmth was matched by a drive that led her to become the first woman in The Baltimore Sun's 176-year history to head its newsroom, died Tuesday of breast cancer . The Sun's senior vice president and director of content, who was 49, essentially grew up at her hometown paper, joining it as a college intern and rising through its reporting and editing ranks. She led The Sun to regional Newspaper of the Year honors during the past two years and spearheaded new print and digital sections while building on its tradition of investigative journalism.

Mary J. Corey, whose personal warmth was matched by a drive that led her to become the first woman in The Baltimore Sun's 176-year history to head its newsroom, died Tuesday of breast cancer . The Sun's senior vice president and director of content, who was 49, essentially grew up at her hometown paper, joining it as a college intern and rising through its reporting and editing ranks. She led The Sun to regional Newspaper of the Year honors during the past two years and spearheaded new print and digital sections while building on its tradition of investigative journalism.

Howard County police emailed a news release just now that inspired Sun grammar guru John McIntyre to tweet: “I worry about opening this message.” The subject line reads: "Attached is a copy of a Fatal Press Release in Howard County. " While we’re on the topic of news releases, I’ll pass along one that a colleague called the “most hilarious pitch ever.” It arrived the other day from Arizona-based Pitch Public Relations. “Along with any coverage you might be planning around the Anthony Weiner photos, I thought you might have interest in featuring this item,” it begins.

I went to college to become an actress. Faithful readers will not be surprised to learn of my dramatic inclinations, but I had leading roles in all my high school plays, and I was Pennsylvania state champion in forensics before it was something used to solve murders on television. A career in the theater was going to be a tough sell to parents who had never gone to college themselves and weren't sure what I was doing to begin with. So I told my parents I was going to college to become a speech and theater teacher so that I could, in turn, direct high school plays and teach students the confidence-building value of competing in forensics, before it became something real-life juries wanted to see more of. But when I got to college, I found that everybody in the theater department was having sex with everybody else and, being that I was the last virgin on the floor section of my dorm, it freaked me out. So I joined the student newspaper to write about theater — those who can, do; those who can't, report on it — and began my life as a journalist.

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.

LEVEL -- Is Chuck DeCaro crazy or is he a man of vision?This was the question on the minds of many of those who gathered at a small airport in Harford County yesterday morning for a demonstration of something that looks like an overgrown model airplane.Mr. DeCaro is counting on the pilotless drone to provide live aerial television news coverage of battles in the Middle East if the current crisis escalates into a shooting war.The drone is just part of the aerial information-gathering operation created by the 40-year-old former Cable News Network journalist with a longtime fancy for flying, who has mixed his two loves to form his own company, Aerobureau Corp.

PRAGUE, Czech Republic - In the past three weeks, Tereza Engelova has left the newsroom of state-run Czech Television only twice. She has eaten in the conference room, slept on the editing suite floor and used a portable toilet in the audio suite. It is something more than dedication to a story. Engelova is one of about 40 journalists who went on strike Dec. 23 and seized the TV newsroom to protest the appointment of a new general manager, Jiri Hodac. They accused Hodac of representing the political interests of a former prime minister, Vaclav Klaus, and of compromising the station's independence.

The Sun said yesterday that it will offer voluntary buyouts to employees across the company with the goal of eliminating 75 positions, marking the newspaper's latest response to sluggish ad sales and an increasingly fragmented industry. Sun Publisher Denise E. Palmer announced the cost-cutting plans in a memo to the staff, saying it is part of an industrywide struggle to cope with rising costs and declining revenue as the Internet, cable television and other news sources continue to chip away at readership and revenue sources.

Mary Corey believed in Baltimore, and she believed in The Sun. Faith in those two things, like a rooting interest in the Orioles, has not always been easy to maintain. Indeed, The Sun's editor, who died this week of breast cancer at the age of 49, lived through a trying era for her hometown and led her hometown paper's newsroom through some of the most difficult years in its history. But she had confidence in both, not because she was a loyal cheerleader but because she was determined to make them better.

It is a somber day in Wordville. Word came to the newsroom yesterday that Mary Corey, The Baltimore Sun 's director of content (read: editor) had died of the breast cancer that she had gallantly fought for years. I have known Mary throughout her entire career at The Sun , from her early days in the features department, through her development as a journalist on the news side, and most recently as the boss. She was eager, energetic, and enthusiastic in all her pursuits.

In the Newtown massacre, as in all such tragic events in a free and open society, both the news and social media went all-out to provide the fullest coverage of what happened and why. The latter is not yet fully known. In too many instances, though, the legitimate quest for the truth was accompanied by abuse. The hordes of print, radio and television reporters who descended on the grieving suburban Connecticut town generally pursued their grim business with due respect for the shattered sensitivities of the families and friends most immediately involved, the ancillary victims of the semi-automatic weapon attack.

Veteran Baltimore newsman Sunni Khalid, who was fired in March by WYPR radio, started work Tuesday as an assignment editor at WMAR (Channel 2), he said. Khalid, a former Baltimore Sun and NPR staffer, was the first newsroom employee hired by the city's public radio station. He had been on probation at WYPR for comments he posted on Facebook. It later was alleged that he made an obscene gesture toward another journalist who was visiting the public radio station. Khalid and WYPR declined comment on his dismissal.

HBO Monday announced that it is picking up Aaron Sorkin's"The Newsroom" for a second season, along with "True Blood" for a sixth. I love the way "The Newsroom"  calls out the press for losing its sense of purpose. Some members of the press didn't like being called out that way. (See my other blog posts about "The Newsroom" to the left of this post.) A couple of pieces of very good news from HBO.  

As I have said earlier, I believe the pilot for Aaron Sorkin's "The Newsroom"  is one of the decade's best productions. I love this series for the way it calls out the press for having lost its sense of purpose. But the press doesn't like be called out that way, and you can see that in some of the reviews attacking Sunday's pilot for being sanctimonious and self-righteous. I love the righteousness of this series -- self or not. Here's video from CNN's  "Reliable Sources" Sunday of a discussion I had with some of my colleagues who don't like "The Newsroom" very much at all. I respect their views.

A disagreement between The Sun's managers and the leaders of its largest employee union has raised the specter of layoffs at Baltimore's oldest and largest newspaper, including involuntary staff cuts in the newsroom that would be the first in modern memory. Denise E. Palmer, publisher and chief executive officer of The Sun, announced Monday that the newspaper would reduce its staff through a voluntary buyout plan, calling it "part of our ongoing process of aligning our people resources with the areas we feel have the best potential for growing readership and revenue."

Veteran Baltimore newsman Sunni Khalid, who was fired in March by WYPR radio, started work Tuesday as an assignment editor at WMAR (Channel 2), he said. Khalid, a former Baltimore Sun and NPR staffer, was the first newsroom employee hired by the city's public radio station. He had been on probation at WYPR for comments he posted on Facebook. It later was alleged that he made an obscene gesture toward another journalist who was visiting the public radio station. Khalid and WYPR declined comment on his dismissal.

UPDATE: I am going to be on CNN's "Reliable Sources" at 11 a.m. (ET) Sunday discussing "The Newsroom" with Maureen Ryan, from the Huffington Post, and Adam Buckman, of Xfinity TV. The Aaron Sorkin series premieres Sunday night at 10 on HBO. This is one of the 20 best pilots of the last 20 years. Don't miss it. I have been thinking about the pilot for Aaron Sorkin's new HBO drama, "The Newsroom," for more than a week now. I screened it last week for a radio piece on WYPR-FM (88.1)

I went to college to become an actress. Faithful readers will not be surprised to learn of my dramatic inclinations, but I had leading roles in all my high school plays, and I was Pennsylvania state champion in forensics before it was something used to solve murders on television. A career in the theater was going to be a tough sell to parents who had never gone to college themselves and weren't sure what I was doing to begin with. So I told my parents I was going to college to become a speech and theater teacher so that I could, in turn, direct high school plays and teach students the confidence-building value of competing in forensics, before it became something real-life juries wanted to see more of. But when I got to college, I found that everybody in the theater department was having sex with everybody else and, being that I was the last virgin on the floor section of my dorm, it freaked me out. So I joined the student newspaper to write about theater — those who can, do; those who can't, report on it — and began my life as a journalist.