As we emerge from the cocoon of the COVID-19 pandemic of 2020, many changes in our community will quickly follow. It will be interesting to witness the lasting effects of how we get together for meetings once safety measures no longer necessitate virtual meetings. Many wonder if at-home grocery delivery, take-home restaurant food, and working from home will have caused lasting changes in how we do business.
Major pandemics throughout history have left permanent changes on society. Recently, an article on History.com reported upon the yellow fever epidemic that swept through Philadelphia in 1793, a time when that city was the nation’s capital. Philadelphia was the home of “influential policy makers, including George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton.
“The [1793] Philadelphia epidemic convinced the Founding Fathers that the social, economic and political health of the nation was inextricably tied up with public health . . .”
The same History.com article reported, “The concept of social distancing . . . also influenced residential building designs. After the 1918 pandemic, public health officials recognized that closely packed urban housing was contributing to the spread of disease. ... In the 1930s, Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal required all apartments to have fire escapes, main hallways that were three feet wide, and separate bathrooms . . .”
How we announce local events and communicate news and information forever has been negatively changed by the events of the past several years. Certainly spam phone calls and emails – and constant attempts by spammers and fraudsters to make us a victim of cyber crimes – have changed our trust relationship with our communication devices. Many folks no longer answer their phone if the number is not already in their contacts directory, and long gone are the days in which folks trusted links contained in their email.
COVID-19 certainly emphasized the importance of local community newspapers to distribute relevant, up-to-date and accurate information to the public. The distribution of inaccurate information on social media has been the topic of much discussion in the past year or so. Witnessing the constant spread of misinformation on social media is the source of constant daily frustration. Not to be overlooked is the lack of civility on social media.
Since the Carroll County Times was sold to the Baltimore Sun Media on May 1, 2014, many changes have come to it. Certainly social media and the transformations caused by the changes in internet and digital publishing technologies have sped the decline of traditional community newspapers. This will have a lasting negative effect on how we get our news and information in the future. One might argue that COVID-19 was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for community newspapers.
At the time of the sale, the Times was the 27th largest employer in Carroll, according to the county’s Department of Economic Development’s website. It had about 83 full-time employees and roughly 30 part-timers.
“The Times started on Oct. 6, 1911, as a weekly newspaper published by the Mather Printing Co. of Westminster. T.W. Mather owned the T.W. Mather Department Store in downtown Westminster,” a story in the paper reported on the day of the sale in 2014.
“Landmark Community Newspapers Inc. purchased the Times in April, 1974, from Adam Spiegel. Over the years, the Times added publication days. When it added a Sunday edition in March, 1987, it became a seven-day publication. In 1996 the Times added its website, carrollcountytimes.com . . .”
Since 2014, Baltimore Sun Media, and its subsequent owner, Tribune Publishing, has experienced a dizzying series of ownership changes and a steady decline of local reporters.
Last month, on May 21, the Baltimore Sun reported, “Tribune Publishing shareholders voted Friday to approve hedge fund Alden Global Capital’s $633 million purchase of the Chicago-based newspaper chain that owns The Baltimore Sun.”
The deal took Tribune Publishing private and added “The Sun, the Chicago Tribune and other major dailies to the Alden portfolio, making the New York-based hedge fund the second-largest U.S. newspaper owner behind Gannett,” the Sun reported.
Sadly, locally, the last day for Pat Stoetzer and Bob Blubaugh, two well-respected, talented and popular longstanding journalists with the Carroll County Times, was June 18. Both left the TImes as part of a voluntary buyout program announced late last month by Tribune Publishing. Stoetzer started with the Times in 1999 and was the Times sports editor from 2015-2021.
According to an article written by Catalina Righter on May 4, 2019, when Blubaugh was named the editor of the Times, “Blubaugh is a Carroll County native. ... He was the high school/college sports reporter for the Times from 1991 to 1997 before his promotion to editor/columnist for the section in 1997. He became a sports content editor at The Baltimore Sun in 2015, but came back to the Carroll County Times in 2016 when he was named news editor . . .”
Over the years we have witnessed many talented journalists leave the industry. However, the loss of Stoetzer and Blubaugh at a critical time when our community attempts to emerge from a historic pandemic is a huge loss for our community. We owe them an incredibly debt of gratitude for the positive impact they have left on the community. They will be missed.
Kevin Dayhoff writes from Westminster. His Time Flies column appears every Sunday. Email him at kevindayhoff@gmail.com.
