The Baltimore Sun
daily broadsheet newspaper in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, United States
The Baltimore Sun is the largest general-circulation daily newspaper based in the U.S. state of Maryland and provides coverage of local, regional, national, and international news.
Founded in 1837, the newspaper was owned by Tribune Publishing until May 2021, when it was acquired by Alden Global Capital, which operates its media properties through Digital First Media. David D. Smith, the executive chairman of Sinclair Broadcast Group, closed a deal to buy the paper on January 15, 2024. Under Smith's ownership, the paper has shifted to become politically conservative, and has seen large staff departures and declines in readership.
History
19th century
The Sun was founded on May 17, 1837, by Arunah Shepherdson Abell and two associates, William Moseley Swain from Rhode Island, and Azariah H. Simmons from Philadelphia, where they had started and published the Public Ledger the year before.
Abell became a journalist with the Providence Patriot and later worked with newspapers in New York City and Boston.
20th century
The Abell family and descendants owned The Sun until 1910, when the local Black and Garrett families invested in the paper at the suggestion of former rival owner/publisher of The News, Charles H. Grasty, and they, along with Grasty gained a controlling interest; they retained the name A. S. Abell Company for the parent publishing company. That same year The Evening Sun was established under reporter, editor and columnist H.L. Mencken (1880–1956).
From 1947 to 1986, The Sun was the owner and founder of Maryland's first television station, WMAR-TV (channel 2), which was a longtime affiliate of CBS until 1981, when it switched to NBC. The station was sold off in 1986, and is now owned by the E. W. Scripps Company, and has been an ABC affiliate since 1995. A. S. Abell also owned several radio stations, but not in Baltimore itself (holding construction permits for WMAR sister AM/FM stations, but never bringing them to air).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “The Baltimore Sun” as daily broadsheet newspaper in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
Why this record matters
The subject matters to the places & architecture register because the source frames it as daily broadsheet newspaper in the city of Baltimore, Maryland, United States. Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Maps, plans, fabric surveys and administrative records can establish how the site’s name, extent and function changed over time. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 16, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q47287. VIAF identifies the subject as 186603738. The Library of Congress control number is no2010112182. 7 of 8 selected statements include explicit references; 2 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1837, 2021, 2024 and 1910.
Modern boundaries and familiar names can conceal earlier jurisdictions or structures that do not align with the present site. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
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Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “The Baltimore Sun”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow The Baltimore Sun primary sources, The Baltimore Sun archive and Baltimore research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
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This entry incorporates text from “The Baltimore Sun” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.