The Baltimore Sun

The Baltimore Sun is the US state of Maryland’s largest general-circulation daily newspaper and provides coverage of local and regional news, events, issues, people, and industries.

The Sun was founded on May 17, 1837, by printer Arunah Shepherdson Abell and two associates. The Abell family owned the paper through to 1910, when the Black family gained a controlling interest. The paper was sold in 1986 to the Times-Mirror Company of Los Angeles. The same week, the rival Baltimore News American, owned by the Hearst Corporation, announced it would fold.

The Sun, like most legacy newspapers in the United States, has suffered a number of setbacks of late, including a decline in readership, a shrinking newsroom, and competition from a new free daily, The Baltimore Examiner, which has ceased publication. In 2000, the Times-Mirror company was purchased by the Tribune Company of Chicago.

On September 19, 2005, and again on August 24, 2008, The Baltimore Sun introduced new layout designs. Its circulation as of 2010 was 195,561 for the daily edition and 343,552 on Sundays. On April 29, 2009, the Tribune Company announced that it would lay off 61 of the 205 staff members in the Sun newsroom. On September 23, 2011, it was reported that the Baltimore Sun would be moving its web edition behind a paywall starting October 10, 2011.

The Baltimore Sun is part of the Baltimore Sun Media Group, which also produces the b free daily newspaper and more than 30 other Baltimore metropolitan-area community newspapers, magazines and Web sites. BSMG content reaches more than one million Baltimore-area readers each week and is the region's most widely read source of news.