Baltimore Sun acknowledges other side to Senator story!

Well, it's a start. The Baltimore Sun, which has long been little more than the mouthpiece for Baltimore City official spin on The Senator saga, finally acknowledged today that there's another side to the story.

The 70-year-old Senator Theatre, the last holdout from the golden age of Baltimore movie houses, is scheduled to go on the auction block Wednesday. Owner Tom Kiefaber, while insisting he accepts that his days of running the theater are numbered, is determined not to let something as arbitrary as an auction decide the building's fate.

Kiefaber, who has been showing classic films and selling memorabilia out of the theater lobby since shortly after showing his last first-run film on March 15, accuses city officials of playing "Russian roulette" with the theater if they allow the auction to go on as planned. When members of the Theatre Historical Society visited the Senator recently, he used the occasion to excoriate city officials, arguing that they should postpone the auction and concentrate on finding a way to have the Senator run as a nonprofit community-based film and performing arts center.

Too bad that they apparently didn't try very hard to get a quote from Tom Kiefaber, and only quoted Councilman Bill Henry and the BDC's Kim Clark in the article.

At least the fact that Bill Henry now feels he has to deny that city government has been trying to wrest control of The Senator away from Tom Kiefaber indicates clearly to anyone reading between the lines that some of us know that is exactly what's been happening.

The article mentions my blog, too. And at least Chris Kaltenbach didn't call me a journalist, which I thank him for. (Today's journalism seems to usually be nothing more than trying to pretend to be neutral, while pushing an agenda. I prefer to be called a writer. I don't pretend to be neutral.)