Two months after announcing plans to move the printing of its newspapers to a plant in Wilmington, Del., Baltimore Sun Media has printed its final newspaper at the Sun Park printing plant in South Baltimore.
Starting Monday, The News Journal, a Wilmington paper owned by Gannett, will print The Baltimore Sun, The Capital of Annapolis, the Carroll County Times and other affiliated publications.
The move will result in the loss of 139 jobs, the Sun reported in November.
The shift comes as newspapers around the country continue to see declining print circulation.
Between 2019 and 2020, print-only newspaper circulation in the U.S. declined by 19 percent, according to the Pew Research Center.
The newspaper industry has seen steep job losses in recent years.
The bulk of the newspaper industry’s job losses came from positions involved in printing and distributing daily papers.
The amount of jobs in print production dropped from 51,590 to 12,780 – a 75 percent decrease – between 2005 and 2019, according to a Free Press analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
Sun reporters visited the plant Sunday night to see the final press run.
Witnessing the final run of the presses at The Baltimore Sun. pic.twitter.com/ER70PeBzzC
— Pamela Wood (@pwoodreporter) January 31, 2022
The paper has always been printed in Baltimore, Sun reporter McKenna Oxenden tweeted, except during a two-month period in 1904.
The only time The Baltimore Sun hasn’t been printed in house was for 2 months after the great fire in 1904.
That streak ends after tonight. The paper will now be printed in Wilmington, DE. pic.twitter.com/Mh66luzItW
— McKenna Oxenden (@mack_oxenden) January 31, 2022
Baltimore Sun Media moved to print in Sun Park in Port Covington in 1992.
In 2018, the company moved most of its operations to the facility.
The Sun leases the building at Sun Park, which is owned by Under Armour founder Kevin Plank’s Sagamore Development.
Sagamore purchased the land from Tribune Publishing – Baltimore Sun Media’s former parent company – for $46.5 million in 2014.
The move marks “the end of a very long era,” Sun reporter Bryn Stole tweeted.
FINAL EDITION: The presses roll in Baltimore for the final time tonight before The Baltimore Sun—the last of the city’s dailies—shutters its plant and moves printing to Delaware. End of a very long era. pic.twitter.com/J1V1tlNf14
— Bryn Stole (@brynstole) January 31, 2022
Sad day. But I find reading print newspapers difficult as I get older. I have to sit at a table so I can lay it out. It’s much easier to read on a tablet and you don’t get ink on you. For some reason, newspapers haven’t gone that route. They would just need an 11” thin slate WiFi tablet and digital subscription. That removes printing costs, paper and distribution. The other issue with newspapers is their liberal slant. The Phila Inquirer could just as easily be called the people’s daily propaganda report, as they sing to the people who don’t buy anything. But I think newspaper reporters are so off the charts they cannot change and will go down in flames along with their papers. Jeff Bezos stopped that trend with the Washington Post, as it now becomes the unique ledger of government newsprint for that city’s 1000s of bureaucrats.