Changing times

Sun king

Print journalism is in trouble. Modern technology is making newspapers obsolete. Today, only 3 percent of young people (18 to 34 year olds) read newspapers.

Last week, the Baltimore Sun's parent company, The Tribune, announced a $3.8 billion second quarter loss. Meanwhile my daily Sun gets lighter and lighter as the paper slashes newsroom staff, closes foreign bureaus, shrinks pages (including comics and stock tables) and consolidates its local news and business sections.

Desperation makes strange bedfellows. This month, the Sun signed an agreement to print The Washington Times. That's right, the liberal Sun will print Rev. Sun Myung Moon's conservative newspaper for the next 10 years. In fact, the Reverend Moon is now the Sun's biggest customer.

But wait, it gets even stranger. Last week, The Sun hired conservative journalist Ron Smith as a weekly columnist for its op-ed page. Smith has been the crusty, iconoclastic voice of Baltimore talk radio for 23 years (disclosure: I'm a weekly guest on Smith's WBAL Radio show). And one of his favorite targets is The Sun. Another is Gov. Martin O'Malley, who refers to Smith's show as "hate radio."

Nor does Smith intend to change his ways. "I've been known to cruelly mock liberal pieties and am not willing to control that impulse," he wrote in his first column for The Sun on Aug. 13. So thank hard times for finally producing some ideological diversity (and added readership?) at The Sun. Now The Sun gives us two Smiths, conservative Ron and liberal Fraser, for the price of one!

Jury-rigged

A recent Abell Foundation study confirms what we already know — there's a huge difference in criminal jury verdicts between Baltimore city and the suburbs.

Baltimore city juries hand down convictions in only 23 percent of criminal cases compared to a 45 percent conviction rate in the suburbs (Howard, Anne Arundel and Baltimore counties). Conversely, Baltimore city juries acquit criminal defendants 43 percent of the time compared to 27 percent in the suburbs.

And in the most serious criminal cases the conviction probability by city juries is only 2 percent compared to 63 percent in suburban juries. Wow, no wonder city defendants want jury trials!

This stark difference in outcomes may stem, in part, from differences in police and prosecutor quality, witness intimidation and judges. But the chief difference is juries: city juries are mostly African-American, lower income, less educated, less trustful of police and more sympathetic to defendants.

So the Abell report recommends the creation of regional jury pools to deal with this disparity in verdicts. That way juries in Baltimore city criminal trials will include suburbanites and suburban juries will include city residents.

Don't do it! A cornerstone principal in our American system is local control of areas like criminal justice, schools and zoning. That's why we locally elect our prosecutors, sheriffs, judges and school boards county-by-county. Likewise, being tried by "a jury of your peers" means by your neighbors, not by an outsider with little stake in the outcome. Would you let non-residents serve on your school board or planning board?

Like it or not, we must honor the ideological differences between localities. Baltimore city voters regularly elect prosecutors who never ask for the death penalty while Baltimore County voters elect prosecutors who almost always do. So be it. Likewise, if city juries regularly acquit criminal defendants, that's the world they choose to live in. If you don't like it, don't live there.

‘Higher' ed?

If you're looking for wisdom and common sense don't look to the leaders of our universities and colleges. Confronted with student "binge drinking," 115 education presidents this week proposed lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18. By making it easier to drink, kids will drink less, they say, because kids will learn moderation. Welcome to higher education's World of the Easy Way Out. Examples abound:

Problem: Students don't learn and are flunking out. Solution: Grade inflation and dumbing down tests.

Problem: Some students make racial slurs and insensitive comments. Solution: Outlaw campus free speech in the name of "tolerance."

Problem: Constant bad press and liability due to binge drinking. Solution: Lower the drinking age to 18.

"After all," say the university presidents, "The kids are going to drink anyway." Great, so let's relax the rules on abusing drugs, drunken driving, cheating on exams, theft, date rape and all the other things "kids are going to do anyway."

God forbid we set behavior standards, make value judgments or act like responsible adults. That's not the mission in higher education's World of the Easy Way Out.

Blair Lee is CEO of the Lee Development Group in Silver Spring.