Some Unwelcome Help From Above   

After much deliberation, Rosemary Armao decided to give up her position as executive director of Investigative Reporters & Editors to accept a job with Baltimore's Sun. It was one of the few newspapers in the country that she respected, and she felt confident it wouldn't bow to outside pressure over hard-hitting stories.

"When I was at IRE, we made a list of the 'dangerous' newspapers in the country," Armao says. "These are papers that made it not happy for politicians and business people who are corrupt. And the Baltimore Sun was on the list."

But after a few weeks as the Sun's Anne Arundel County bureau chief, something happened that made Armao wonder if she had made the right move. The Sun's publisher had intervened to water down a critical piece written by Baltimore County government reporter Ronnie Greene.

Greene's story detailed a potential conflict of interest involving Baltimore County Executive C.A. Dutch Ruppersberger, who had played a major role in enticing a large credit card company to move its regional headquarters to the county.

The return of MBNA Corp., the world's second- largest credit card company, which had abandoned the Baltimore area for Delaware in 1982, would mean 2,500 white-collar jobs and a boost to the local economy. It appeared to be a coup for Ruppersberger.

But then Greene wrote a story disclosing that Ruppersberger owns a debt-collection company run by his brother that does business with MBNA. The story raised questions as to whether Ruppersberger's business ties might affect the way the county treated the credit card company. It quoted ethics experts as saying it would be very important for Ruppersberger to avoid even the slightest appearance that his business relationship with MBNA had affected the way the government dealt with the firm.

But while at least three editors had signed off on the story, including Managing Editor William K. Marimow, it nonetheless ran into a major roadblock. Greene was told that Sun Publisher Mary E. Junck wanted more work done on it. "I think Mary's concern was that the story be a well-written and well-substantiated story," says Michel Pratka, a company spokeswoman who spoke on Junck's behalf. "She had some concerns about it and voiced those concerns, and an edited version of Ronnie Greene's story ran on Sunday [February 2]."

The revised (and much weaker) version ran as a 12-inch companion story to a longer business-section piece on MBNA. The sidebar focused on how effectively Ruppersberger had used his connections to bring in the company and downplayed the potential conflict of interest.

In light of Junck's objections, Greene's piece was heavily edited by Sun Editor John S. Carroll and Marimow, both of whom had fought to preserve the original story. The revised story ran with no byline.

Not surprisingly, the handling of Greene's story triggered great turmoil at the Sun, which has aspirations to join the ranks of the nation's elite papers and has been attracting high-powered talent to its staff. Greene submitted his resignation the day before the truncated version of his piece appeared (it wasn't accepted). Staffers rallied to Greene's defense, and about 40 of them signed a petition to the publisher decrying her decision. Greene declined comment.

Many on the Sun staff were suspicious that Junck was caving in to pressure from MBNA and Ruppersberger, and that she valued the 2,500 new jobs more than the integrity of her newspaper. Their concerns arose in part from the fact that Junck is chair of the Greater Baltimore Alliance, which tries to attract businesses to Baltimore. Junck was part of a delegation that traveled to MBNA's office in Wilmington, Delaware, to welcome the $39 billion company.

Sun sources say that not long before the stories were slated to run, an MBNA official called a Sun reporter, saying that the move was "on hold" because of Greene's story. Some at the paper thought the company was threatening to pull out if Greene's story ran. "It's not true," Pratka says.

Says one Sun reporter, "The overriding issue is, how can a newspaper point its prissy fingers at other people with conflicts of interest and not see the glaring cases when it has a conflict of interest? Mary has as much a potential conflict of interest as Ruppersberger."

Junck declined to discuss the incident with AJR. "Mary's concern wasn't that it was a negative story," Pratka says. "Mary's concern was that the facts as we presented them were substantiated or that any implications in the story were substantiated and stated strongly, as opposed to innuendo."

The day after the MBNA package ran, the Sun newsroom was engulfed by a virtual staff revolt. Later that day Junck changed her mind and agreed to publish Greene's original story--cut from 46 inches to 28. It ran the following day on the Metro section front, above the fold.

Carroll, who had left two days earlier for a Cancun vacation, flew back to Baltimore to calm his troops. But the decision to run the story had been made before he arrived, so he returned to Mexico. Carroll couldn't be reached for comment.

Greene was said to be satisfied with the second version of his story that eventually appeared. "Once she [Junck] realized there was no one really on her side, things changed," says a Sun reporter who asked not to be named. "But what's troubling me is we are left with mixed feelings. You don't know what prompted this, a recognition of the principles involved or a tactical decision. Frankly, this is out of character for Junck."

Junck, the paper's publisher since April 1993, is said to intervene rarely in the news operation and is generally well-regarded. The former publisher of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, Junck has no newsroom experience, having spent her career on the business side.

Will the upheaval over Greene's story slow down the Sun's progress? "The story that was in the paper on Tuesday was a very good, solid story," Marimow says. "In my own mind, I believe all's well that ends well. The main interest is in sustaining the momentum we've achieved lately."

And Armao professes to be satisfied as well. "I'm not thinking of leaving now," she says. "I like the whole way things eventually happened."