 Patuxent Publishing Company’s former headquarters in Columbia, 1978-2011 | |
| Type | Daily newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Broadsheet |
| Owner | Sinclair Broadcast Group |
| Publisher | Trif Alatzas |
| Founded | 1869 |
| Headquarters | Ellicott City, Maryland &Columbia, Maryland |
| Website | howardcountytimes |
The Howard County Times is a weekly newspaper servingHoward County, Maryland, USA.
Although it claims to trace its earliest origins to 1840,[1] it was refounded as a weekly newspaper in 1869 asThe Ellicott City Times, after the purchase of the brief post-American Civil War periodicalEllicott City Record a weekly newspaper then. After nine decades of bearing the name of its main town andcounty seat, in 1958, its name was changed toThe Howard County Times to reflect it's wider coverage of county issues, affairs, and events. It went through other significant changes of ownership in 1882 and 1920. It was finally acquired in 1978 by the then-independent local publisher Patuxent Publishing Company with offices in the nearby city ofColumbia, a futuristic planned town by nationally renowned developerJames Rouse, along with several other local community weekly papers in Howard County and neighboringBaltimore County (using theTimes nameplate) to the northeast in several suburban areas and surroundingBaltimore City in a horseshoe arc.[2]
TheHoward County Times is now owned by theBaltimore Sun Media Group, which is a subsidiary of the region's major daily newspaperThe Sun, which in turn is now owned since earlier this year by Smith and his Sinclair syndicate.[3] The Howard County paper maintains its online news page onThe Baltimore Sun website.[4]
The Howard County Times traces its history to 1840, when theHoward Free Press was established by Edward Waite and Matthew Fields in what was known then asEllicott Mills, (later renamedEllicott City).[5] The newspaper was published until 1842. Between 1840 and theAmerican Civil War (1861-1865), a succession of newspapers opened and closed in Ellicott Mills, serving the designated in 1838 as the Howard or Western District ofAnne Arundel County until the separation and erection of Howard as a separate county in 1851 in theState of Maryland as authorized by theGeneral Assembly of Maryland sitting in the state capital ofAnnapolis. During these years of the early 1850s also saw debates and work for the ratification of theMaryland Constitution of 1851 (to succeed theoriginal document from theAmerican Revolution period in 1776) which influenced the status of the new county separated and laid out in the center of the state betweenBaltimore andWashington, D.C. and then afterwards the future course of the new 22nd jurisdiction in the state of the new Howard County. After thePatapsco Enterprise closed in the fall of 1861, no other newspaper was published in Howard County during the remainder of the war until 1865 when theHoward County Record was founded by publisher Isaiah Wolfersberger.
In 1869, John R. Brown, Jr., a Howard County native who had served in theConfederate States Army during the Civil War, purchased theHoward County Record and changed its name toThe Ellicott City Times. Under Brown, the newspaper was successful and thrived. After Brown's death in 1877, the paper had a number of short owners. Five years later, in 1882,Edwin Warfield, (1848–1920), became owner and publisher of the Howard County and Ellicott City news sheet. Besides his local interests close to home he later became the 45thGovernor of Maryland, serving from 1904-1908, at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries and was also future banker, establishing theFidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland, a banking and trust firm established in 1890 inDowntown Baltimore (with a landmark office at the northwest corner of theNorth Charles and West Lexington Streets) built in 1894 (reconstructed and expanded after damaged byGreat Baltimore Fire of 1904) and also founder and publisher ofThe Daily Record, a daily business and legal newspaper in Baltimore. After Warfield's death, publication was continued by the Warfield family over the next century expanding into a small economic media empire with a glossy monthly magazine before being sold.
Following the death of Warfield in 1920, theHoward County Times was then owned by a local county partnership ofMaryland Circuit CourtJudgeJames A. Clark Sr. (1884-1955), Paul Talbot, andPaul Griffith ("Pete") Stromberg, (1892–1952), who took over as editor. Stromberg was later elected a state senator representing Howard County in theMaryland Senate (upper chamber of theMaryland General Assembly) and an editor ofThe Baltimore Sun, a major daily morning newspaper in Baltimore (then published since its 1837 by the longtime owners of the A. S. Abell Company of the Abell family and descendants (plus additional Black family of investors in 1910) of co-founderArunah Shepherdson Abell (1806-1888). Coincidentally, decades later would seeThe Sunpapers along with its later syndicate chain owner, theTribune Company (of theChicago Tribune and theLos Angeles Times), would in turn also purchase and absorb theHoward County Times in a later merger with its last independent publisher, the Patuxent Publishing Company ofColumbia, Maryland.[6]
In 1940, Stromberg took control of the Maryland Printing and Publishing Company, which gave him sole ownership of the paper. Shortly after he took total control as publisher, theEllicott City Times put out a special issue of 80 pages packed thick with ads and congratulatory notices plus photos, illustrations, and descriptive historical articles for its centennial in March 1941. Stromberg in turn created or purchased over the next few post-World War II years, 11 new local papers in the nearby growing suburban (Baltimore County) or outlying/surroundingBaltimore City communities and neighborhoods, eventually ringing around Baltimore in a horseshoe shaped arc, naming his syndicate the Stromberg Newspapers and employed his nephew Charles L Gerwig as editor. Some of these were theArbutus Times,Catonsville Times,Owings Mills Times,Towson Times,The Jeffersonian, (Towson)Northeast Record, (Parkville / Carney / Overlea)Northeast Booster,[North] Baltimore Messenger (Baltimore City) and theLaurel Leader.[7]
On November 12, 1958, after nearly 90 years, the name ofThe Ellicott City Times was changed toThe Howard County Times to reflect increased county-wide coverage.[8]
In 1965, TheColumbia Times was created by Stromberg Newspapers as a spin-off newspaper for the new growing planned town ofColumbia and its traditional main street of the small business district to the new growth in central Howard County. Stromberg's daughter, Doris Stromberg Thompson, took over as editor of the paper for the next 12 years from 1966 to 1978, and focused on the phenomenal growth of the new community and its villages.[9]
The separate competingColumbia Flier was established by Zeke Orlinsky four years later after the start of theColumbia Times in 1969, and two years after Rouse began officially opening and publicizing development of Columbia after purchasing major land buys in secret in the central county during the mid-1960s. It formed a coupon flier for the new development of Columbia. As the new town grew quickly and additional surrounding villages were laid out, Orlinsky's paper served a larger market than theTimes. The Stromberg Company syndicate eventually purchased the newerFlier paper.[10] The editor, Tom Graham, used the paper to encourage the growth of Columbia, promoting political candidates who supported the vision of Rouse and the project.[11]
In 1978,The Rouse Company architect Robert Moon designed a new headquarters building for the Patuxent Publishing Company in a modernist building leading into central Columbia. Moon's wife worked at the firm as well, becoming editor of theColumbia Flier and then general manager of Patuxent Publishing. The Baltimore Sun Media Group purchased Patuxent Publishing Company, including the ancientHoward County Times and newerColumbia Flier, integrating the local papers into its growing stable of several daily papers in several regionalcounty seats and towns of several other suburban weekly community newspapers. The Patuxent Publishing/Columbia Flier building was put up for sale, but no tenants were signed up for sale for over three years.[12] In 2014, formerBaltimore Sun reporter and news editor and now public relations director for Howard County, David Nitkin, announced that the then-Howard County ExecutiveKen Ulman, directed the purchase of the Patuxent/Flier building by the county for $2.8 million dollars.[13] County councilperson Mary Kay Sigaty announced the building where husband Tom Graham used to work as an editor would be rebuilt as a replacement headquarters for the county's Economic Development Authority and the Maryland Center for Entrepreneurship.[14]
