 Front page of The Leader from November 26, 1897 | |
| Type | Weekly newspaper |
|---|---|
| Format | Tabloid |
| Owner(s) | Tribune Publishing |
| Headquarters | Baltimore, Maryland |
| Website | laurelleader.com |
The Laurel Leader is a weekly newspaper which has been published continually since 1897, serving the greater Laurel, Maryland area, including Prince George's, Montgomery, Anne Arundel, and Howard Counties. The Leader is currently owned by Tribune Publishing, and operates as a subsidiary of The Baltimore Sun .
In 1897, James Curley founded The Leader in Laurel. Between 1897 and 1980, the ownership passed from Curley to G. Bowie McCeney to Gertrude Poe. In July 1980, Patuxent Publishing Company bought the newspaper. In September 1997, Patuxent Publishing was sold to The Baltimore Sun which was a subsidiary of Times Mirror. In June 2000, Tribune Publishing purchased Times Mirror and thus the Baltimore Sun, Patuxent Publishing, and the Laurel Leader.
In 1897 attorney James Curley founded The Leader, a weekly newspaper serving the approximately 2,600 residents of the city of Laurel, MD. [1] It replaced the Free Quill, one of at least six newspapers which existed in the city in the second half of the nineteenth century. [2] Curley created the Leader to "further his business interests and rally local Republicans," and the paper focused on national and sensational news rather than local news. Of the eight pages published each week, six consisted of national and international news while the only two were devoted to local news as well as advertisements. [3] Curley was the paper's editor until 1938, when he gave up a half-interest in the paper as partial repayment of a mortgage debt, and sold the other half to the debt collector, G. Bowie McCeney.
After James Curley sold the paper to G. Bowie McCeney, McCeney served as editor for six months before appointing Gertrude Poe editor in 1939. Poe had previously worked in McCeney's office and had recently graduated from American University's law school when she was hired as the Leader's editor rather than joining McCeney's firm as an attorney. "He [McCeney] hands me a copy [of the Leader] with a grin and says, 'My career as an editor just ended. Yours is just beginning." [2] Poe served as the Leader's editor until 1980, while McCeney remained the paper's publisher until 1978. In 1946 the paper's name was changed to The News Leader, after merging with the Bowie Register and The College Park News, two other papers owned by McCeney. From 1939 until the late 1950s, the Leader was a "one woman show," with Poe serving as advertising salesperson, graphic designer, copywriter, proofreader, and distributor as well as editor. [4] Under Poe's leadership the focus of the paper shifted from national to local news, and increasingly catered to the local military population based at nearby Fort Meade. In addition, the paper made a strong effort to focus on positive news in the city. In 1992 Poe was quoted in an interview stating: "Maybe I was a little lopsided...I still think the media in general focuses too much on the bad news...There are so many good people. That exposure in the paper means so much to them and their stories can inspire others." [2]
During Poe's tenure as editor the Leader covered major national news stories related to Laurel, including the attempted assassination of presidential candidate George Wallace and the destruction of the 9th Street Bridge and several parts of downtown Laurel during Hurricane Agnes. For her work, Poe received a number of major awards and honors. In 1958 she was the first woman elected president of the Maryland Press Association, the first woman elected to that position, and in 1967 was the second ever winner of the Emma C. McKinney Award given by the National Newspaper Association. In 1987 she was the first ever living person elected into the Maryland–Delaware–D.C. Press Association Hall of Fame, and in 2011 she was elected to the Maryland Women's Hall of Fame. [5]
In 1980, Poe retired as editor and sold the paper to newspaper chain Patuxent Publishing Company, who renamed it The Laurel Leader and appointed Assistant Editor Karen Yengich as editor. Yengich had worked for the Leader for eight years; her first assignment was to cover George Wallace's speech at Laurel Shopping Center on May 18, 1972, where Arthur Bremer attempted to assassinate Wallace. Yengich oversaw an increased focus in the paper on photography and feature articles, with a strong interest in the city's growth. She was awarded the John Hay Whitney Award in 1988, which included a year spent working at the International Herald Tribune in Paris. [2]
When Yengich left the Leader in 1990 she was replaced by Joe Murchison, a longtime professional journalist who had previously worked for the Fauquier Democrat, Richmond News Leader, and Columbia Flier, and who had been a reporter at the Leader since 1985, serving as acting editor in 1988–89 while Yengich was taking a year of absence. Under Murchison's guidance, the paper shifted from a broadsheet format to tabloid in January 1994, and changed from a paid to free circulation model. [2] While Murchison was editor of the paper, major stories which appeared in the Leader included its local coverage of the 9/11 terror attacks. Hijacker Hani Hanjour had stayed at the Valencia Motel in Laurel prior to the attack.
In 2007 Murchison retired as editor of the Leader. He currently serves as Executive Director of Side by Side, a non-profit organization based in Laurel. [6]
From 2007 to 2008, the editor of the Laurel Leader was Pete Pichaske. In August 2008 he was replaced by Melanie Dzwonchyk, who began working at the Leader as a freelance writer in 1993 and joined the paper's staff in 1995, serving as features editor under Joe Murchison. Several months later, in December 2008, the Leader's offices moved to the Patuxent Publishing Co. headquarters in Columbia, Maryland, and in December 2013 the Leader moved again, this time to the Baltimore Sun building in Baltimore, Maryland.
In January 2014, Dzwonchyk was appointed news editor of the Howard County Times and the Columbia Flier, while continuing as editor of the Leader.[ citation needed ] She retired in 2017. In 2021, The Baltimore Sun announced the paper would no longer have Laurel-specific coverage but would share material from The Sun and other Tribune publications. [7]
The Leader was the focus of a "Ripped from the Headlines: Laurel in the News" exhibit which opened at the Laurel Museum in February 2015 and explored the paper's coverage of local and national news throughout its existence. [8]
The Chicago Tribune is an American daily newspaper based in Chicago, Illinois, owned by Tribune Publishing. Founded in 1847, and formerly self-styled as the "World's Greatest Newspaper", it remains the most-read daily newspaper in the Chicago metropolitan area and the Great Lakes region. In 2022, it had the seventh-highest circulation of any American newspaper.
Laurel is a city in Maryland, United States, located midway between Washington, D.C. and Baltimore on the banks of the Patuxent River. While the city limits are entirely in northern Prince George's County, outlying developments extend into Anne Arundel, Montgomery and Howard counties. Founded as a mill town in the early 19th century, Laurel expanded local industry and was later able to become an early commuter town for Washington and Baltimore workers following the arrival of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad in 1835. Largely residential today, the city maintains a historic district centered on its Main Street, highlighting its industrial past.
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The Sun was a New York newspaper published from 1833 until 1950. It was considered a serious paper, like the city's two more successful broadsheets, The New York Times and the New York Herald Tribune. The Sun was the first successful penny daily newspaper in the United States, and was for a time, the most successful newspaper in America.
The Baltimore News-American was a broadsheet newspaper published in downtown Baltimore, Maryland until May 27, 1986. It had a continuous lineage of more than 200 years. For much of the mid-20th century, it had the largest circulation in the city.
Laurel High School is a public high school located in Laurel, Maryland, United States; it is the oldest school in the Prince George's County Public Schools system.
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Tribune Publishing Company is an American newspaper print and online media publishing company. The company, which was acquired by Alden Global Capital in May 2021, has a portfolio that includes the Chicago Tribune, the New York Daily News, the Orlando Sentinel, South Florida's Sun-Sentinel, The Virginian-Pilot, the Hartford Courant, additional titles in Pennsylvania and Virginia, syndication operations, and websites. It also publishes several local newspapers in its metropolitan regions, which are organized in subsidiary groups.
The Aegis is a local newspaper in Harford County, Maryland, United States. Its first issue was published on February 2, 1923.
Edgar Allan Poe was Attorney General of the State of Maryland from 1911 to 1915. He was born in Baltimore, the son of former Maryland Attorney General John Prentiss Poe. He was named for his great uncle and second cousin, twice removed, the celebrated author Edgar Allan Poe, who died in 1849.
The Avondale Mill was a large gable-front stone structure, three stories in height, and 10 bays long by three wide. It was located on the bank of the Patuxent River in the city of Laurel, Prince George's County, Maryland. It was constructed in 1844–1845 for Captain William Mason & Son of Baltimore. It was complemented by the neighboring Laurel Mill built in 1811, S.D. Heath's machine shop, and Richard Israel's flouring mill. At that time it was provided with the machinery for the manufacture of fine cloth, running as many as 1,500 cotton spindles with 150 employees. In 1845, industrialist Peter Gorman was responsible for the first macadamized (paved) road in Laurel, Avondale Street next to the new Mill.
Whiskey Bottom Road is a historic road north of Laurel, Maryland that traverses Anne Arundel and Howard Counties in an area that was first settled by English colonists in the mid-1600s. The road was named in the 1880s in association with one of its residents delivering whiskey after a prohibition vote. With increased residential development after World War II, it was designated a collector road in the 1960s; a community center and park are among the most recent roadside developments.
The Howard County Times is a daily newspaper serving Howard County, Maryland, USA. Although it claims to trace its origins to 1840, it was founded in 1869 as The Ellicott City Times, a weekly newspaper. In 1958, its name was changed to The Howard County Times and it was acquired by the then-independent local publisher Patuxent Publishing Company in 1978, along with other local papers. As of January 2016, The Howard County Times is currently a unit of the Baltimore Sun Media Group and maintains its online news page on The Baltimore Sun website. The Howard County Times website and X page provides news items from the Times as well as several other local area newspapers and magazines, including the Columbia Flier, the Laurel Leader, and Howard magazine.
Gertrude Louise Poe was an American journalist, lawyer, real estate agent, insurance agent, and radio broadcaster who served as the editor of Laurel Leader in Laurel, Maryland from 1939 to 1980. She was known as "Maryland's First Lady of Journalism."
Paul Griffith ("Pete") Stromberg was the owner since 1940 and editor since 1920 of "The Howard County Times", founded 1840 in Ellicott City, Maryland, the county seat of Howard County, which later grew into a syndicate of local community newspapers known as the "Stromberg Newspapers" in Howard County, Anne Arundel County, Prince George's County, Baltimore County and Baltimore City. He also was a Maryland State Senator from Howard County in the General Assembly of Maryland.
The Maryland Industrial and Agricultural Institute for Colored Youths was a school in North Laurel, Maryland, United States founded in 1901 by Ernest Lyon for the education of African-American students in central Maryland.
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Capital Gazette Communications, owned by Tribune Publishing through its subsidiary the Baltimore Sun Media Group, publishes the daily The Capital and the twice-weekly Maryland Gazette newspapers and the weeklies Bowie Blade-News and Crofton-West County Gazette. Its offices in Parole, Maryland, an unincorporated area of Anne Arundel County just outside Annapolis, were the site of the Capital Gazette shooting in June 2018. In August 2020, Tribune Publishing announced it was permanently closing the newsroom and would provide workspace as needed at The Baltimore Sun offices.
Mary Angela Lehman is an American politician from the Democratic Party and is a current member of the Maryland House of Delegates representing District 21.
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