The nonprofit Baltimore Banner has a report on a newsroom speech by David Smith, the new owner of its for-profit competitor, the Baltimore Sun:
"Let me tell you something I can't do anything about. I can't do anything about a person who is a product of the Baltimore City school system. ... Can't do anything about that. As a news organization, you might be able to do something about it by focusing on those people, that class of people, who are products of the Baltimore City school system, who have never had a job. They're always going to be a product of the government. They're always going to be on welfare. Always going to be on some structure that the government takes care of. The only way you're going to fix that is to fix the school system."
"And it's not just Baltimore City. It's Baltimore County. It's Cincinnati. It's in every place I have business, it's in Portland, Maine. It's everywhere. And it's government controlling the system that is causing in large part, failure. So people who can't read or write, who do you blame for that?"
"You can blame the family because you can say there is no family. We had a story last year of a woman who has six different kids by three different men. Nobody knows who the kid's father [is]. They're products of the Baltimore City inner city lifestyle. I can't do anything about that. I can do something about this theoretical school system if I tell the story long enough and loud enough at a personal level..."