The Howard County Times

The Howard County Times

Patuxent Publishing Company’s former headquarters in Columbia, 1978-2011
Type	Daily newspaper
Format	Broadsheet
Owner(s)	Sinclair Broadcast Group
Publisher	Trif Alatzas
Founded	1869
Headquarters	Ellicott City, Maryland, Columbia, Maryland

The Howard County Times is a weekly newspaper serving Howard County, Maryland, USA. Although it claims to trace its earliest origins to 1840,^[1] it was refounded as a weekly newspaper in 1869 as The Ellicott City Times, after the purchase of the brief post-American Civil War periodical Ellicott City Record a weekly newspaper then. After nine decades of bearing the name of its main town and county seat, in 1958, its name was changed to The 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 of Columbia, a futuristic planned town by nationally renowned developer James Rouse in the mid-1960s, along with several other local community weekly papers in Howard County and neighboring Baltimore County (using the Times nameplate) to the northeast in several suburban areas and surrounding Baltimore City in a horseshoe arc.^[2] As of January 2016,^[update]

The Howard County Times is currently is a unit of the Baltimore Sun Media Group which had purchased the Patuxent Publishing chain several years ago when The Sun was also owned by the Tribune Publishing national media syndicate, begun and owned by the Chicago Tribune. Later The Sun was sold by Tribune to and owned briefly by Alden Global Capital, a venture capital / investment / finance group based in New York City. It in turn sold Maryland's largest and major daily newspaper and its subsidiary of several daily newspapers in surrounding county seats / towns in Howard, Baltimore County, Anne Arundel County, Carroll County and Harford County. along with numerous regional local community papers (mostly published weekly) shortly later in 2024 to Baltimorean David D. Smith, head of the Sinclair Broadcast Group of Hunt Valley in north-central Baltimore County, which also owns local UHF television station WBFF-TV (Channel 45) and operates two other TV stations in Baltimore besides numerous other stations and media properties across the country.

The Howard County Times is owned now by the Baltimore Sun Media Group, which is a subsidiary of the region's major daily newspaper The 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 on The Baltimore Sun internet website.^[4]

The Howard County Times internet website and X (formerly Twitter) page provides news items from the Times printed pages as well as several other local area neighboring newspapers and magazines, including the Columbia Flier in Howard County, the Laurel Leader (in Laurel (on the border of Anne Arundel County and Prince George's County), and Howard magazine.^[5]

The Howard County Times traces its history to 1840, when the Howard Free Press was established by Edward Waite and Matthew Fields in what was known then as Ellicott Mills, (later to become renamed as Ellicott City). the major mill town along the upper branches of the Patapsco River (and future county seat) of Howard County, Maryland, just west of Baltimore, the major city and harbor / port of Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay.^[6] The newspaper was published until 1842. Between 1840 and the American Civil War (1861-1865), a succession of newspapers opened and closed in Ellicott Mills / Ellicott City, serving the designated in 1838 as the Howard or Western District of Anne Arundel County until the separation and erection of Howard as a separate county in 1851 in the State of Maryland as authorized by the General Assembly of Maryland sitting in the state capital of Annapolis. During these years of the early 1850s also saw debates and work for the ratification of a second Maryland Constitution of 1851 (to succeed the original / first document from the American Revolution period in 1776) which influenced the status of the new county separated and laid out in the center of the state between Baltimore and Washington, D.C. - and then afterwards the future course of the new 22nd jurisdiction in the state of the new Howard County. After the earlier news sheet Patapsco Enterprise closed in the fall 1861, no other newspaper was published in Howard County during the remainder of the war until 1865 when the Howard County Record was founded by publisher Isaiah Wolfersberger. In 1869, John R. Brown, Jr., a Howard County native who had served in the Confederate States Army during the Civil War, purchased the Howard County Record and changed its name to The 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 / publisher of the Howard County and Ellicott City news sheet. Besides his local interests close to home he later became the 45th Governor of Maryland serving 1904-1908, at the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries and was also future banker, establishing the Fidelity and Deposit Company of Maryland (F. & D.), a banking and trust firm established in 1890 in Downtown Baltimore (with a landmark offices / skyscraper at northwest corner of North Charles and West Lexington Streets) built in 1894 (reconstructed and expanded / heightened after damaged by Great Baltimore Fire of 1904) and also founder / publisher of The Daily Record, a legal / business / finance daily newspaper (published five days a week, Monday to Friday) in Baltimore. After the former Governor's death, his City publication was continued by the Warfield family over the next century expanding into a small legal / business / economic media empire with a glossy monthly magazine before being sold but is still published in 2024.

Following the death of former Governor Edwin Warfield and previous owner of the Ellicott City / Howard County paper in 1920, the Howard County Times was then owned by a local county partnership of Maryland Circuit Court Judge James A. Clark Sr. (1884-1955), Paul Talbot and Paul Griffith ("Pete") Stromberg, (1892–1952), who took over as editor. Stromberg was also later elected a Maryland state senator representing Howard in the Maryland Senate (upper chamber of the General Assembly / (state legislature) and an editor of The Sun, a major daily morning newspaper in Baltimore (then published since its 1837 by the longtime owners of the A.S. Abell & Company of Abell family and descendants (plus additional Black family of investors in 1910) of co-founder Arunah Shepherdson Abell (1806-1888). Coincidentally, decades later would see The Baltimore Sunpapers (published morning, evening and Sunday), along with its later syndicate chain owner, the Tribune Company (of the Chicago Tribune and the Los Angeles Times), would in turn also purchase/ absorb the Howard County Times in a later merger buy with its last independent publisher, the Patuxent Publishing Company of Columbia, Maryland.^[7]

In 1940, Stromberg took control of the Maryland Printing and Publishing Company which gave him sole ownership of the Howard County paper. Shortly after he took total control as publisher, his Ellicott 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, even was noted in a news feature article about the event / occasion in the big city daily of Baltimore Sun.

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 / surrounding Baltimore City communities / 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 the Arbutus Times, Catonsville Times, Owings Mills Times, Towson Times, The Jeffersonian, (Towson) Northeast Record, (Parkville / Carney / Overlea) Northeast Booster, [North] Baltimore Messenger (Baltimore City) and the Laurel Leader (of Laurel, Maryland, between Anne Arundel County / Prince George's County).^[8]

On November 12, 1958, after 90 years, the name of The Ellicott City Times was changed to The Howard County Times to reflect increased county-wide coverage.^[9]

In 1965, The Columbia Times was created by Stromberg Newspapers as a spin-off newspaper for the new growing developed planned town further west from Ellicott City and its traditional main street of the small business district to the new growth in central Howard County. Columbia, Maryland envisioned by noted famous developer James Rouse (1914-1996), who also created numerous "festival marketplaces" across the nation in various cities especially on their waterfronts, with best example of Harborplace in Downtown Baltimore's shoreline at the Inner Harbor in 1979-1980. 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.^[10]

The separate new competing Columbia Flier was established by Zeke Orlinsky four years later after the start of the Columbia 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, owner Zeke Orlinsky's paper served a larger market than the Times, eventually the Stromberg Company syndicate purchased the newer Flier paper.^[11] 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.^[12]

In 1978, the Rouse Company architect, Robert Moon, designed a new headquarters building for the Patuxent Publishing Company in a modernist building at 10750 Little Patuxent Parkway leading into central Columbia. Moon's wife worked at the firm as well, becoming editor of the Columbia Flier and then general manager of Patuxent Publishing. The Baltimore Sun media group purchased Patuxent Publishing Company, including the ancient Howard County Times and newer Columbia Flier, integrating the local papers into its growing stable of several daily papers in several regional county seats / towns of plus several other other suburban weekly community newspapers. The Patuxent Publishing / Columbia Flier building on 10750 Little Patuxent Parkway in Columbia was put up for sale, but no tenants were signed up for sale for over three years.^[13] In 2014, the former Baltimore Sun reporter / news editor, and now public relations director for Howard County, David Nitkin, announced that the then Howard County Executive, Ken Ulman, directed the purchase of the Patuxent / Flier building by the county for $2.8 million dollars.^[14] County councilperson Mary Kay Sigaty announced the building where her 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.^[15]

The Howard County Times has since been integrated as a unit of the newly organized local publishing subsidiary Baltimore Sun Media Group under the former Times Mirror Company of the Los Angeles Times, and later under its subsequent 2001 purchase by the Tribune Publishing, competing national media syndicate of the Chicago Tribune daily newspaper.

• Paul Griffith ("Pete") Stromberg, (1892-1952, partner / editor 1920-1940, owner / publisher 1940-1952)
• Zeke Orlinsky (Columbia Flier)
• Trif Alatzas (Baltimore Sun Media Group)

• List of newspapers in Maryland

• Baltimore Sun Media Group: Howard County Times website