City: Baltimore, MD

Category: Media

Telephone: (410) 332-6000

Address: 501 North Calvert St.

Description: A. S. Abell originally created the Sun in 1837 as a penny paper to appeal to and serve Baltimore’s middle class. The Sun’s first foreign correspondent left the harbor in 1887, and its in-depth coverage of the international scene continues today with firsthand accounts from its five foreign bureaus and through the Associated Press, of which it was a founding member. Over the years the Sun’s journalism has won more than 15 Pulitzer Prizes. From 1920 to 1995 A. S. Abell Company also published the Evening Sun, which many Baltimoreans still mourn. Its focus was more community-oriented and its tone slightly more irreverent—a legacy of H. L. Mencken, Baltimore’s most famous curmudgeon and founder of the Evening Sun’s editorial page.The Sun, bought by a private investor in 2007, enjoys a circulation of nearly a half million for its Sunday editions. The Sun has daily circulation of 210,098 (as of 2007) and Sunday of 351,243 and it offers county-specific editions for Anne Arundel, Howard, Carroll, and Baltimore Counties and also owns Patuxent Publishing. Weekly tabs include Thursday’s “Live,” a pullout that lists Baltimore happenings, while Sunday’s edition has real estate and employment sections. As the print readership declined, it’s online (www.baltimoresun.com) readership has zoomed since its launch in 1996 to more than 3.5 million unique visitors a month. About three dozen blogs are created by its staff members, covering such topics as restaurants, pets, and sports. With the death of so many print newspapers, and the Sun seemingly joining them in bleeding money, the paper has been redesigned twice, thinned the staff and the number of pages. Although decried by purists, the paper seems to spend more time and space on what readers want to know rather than what editors want them to know. It makes for a fast, fun, and still educational read. The daily paper is 50 cents a copy; 25 cents if you buy it late in the day from a street vendor and $1.66 on Sundays. One-year subscription is $176.80, but look for special offers that can reduce that amount.