The Capital is a daily newspaper published in Annapolis, Maryland. It serves the city as well as all of Anne Arundel County and neighboring Kent Island in Queen Anne's County. It is an evening newspaper during the week and offers morning delivery on the weekend. Philip Merrill was the publisher until his suicide in June 2006.[1] The editor is Tom Marquardt. One of its subsidiary papers is the Gazette, originally titled the Maryland Gazette, founded by William Parks in the Eighteenth Century, and one of the oldest newspapers in the United States.
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William Parks originally founded The Maryland Gazette in Annapolis in the early Eighteenth century. Eventually Parks moved to Virginia, and the paper was later published by Anne Catherine Hoof Green. Today, the Gazette, published twice weekly, is a subsidiary of the Capital that covers northern Anne Arundel County, Maryland. The first paper to feature the word "Capital" rolled off the presses in 1884 as the Evening Capital. It was a weekly until 1955. The word "Evening" was dropped in 1981.
In 1766, the Maryland Gazette was one of the venues for a war of words between a future signer of the Declaration of Independence and several loyalist members of the Annapolis political establishment. In the Maryland Gazette Extraordinary of June 19, 1766, Walter Dulany, George Steuart (1700–1784), John Brice (1705–1766) and others published an article excoriating Samuel Chase, co-founder of the Anne Arundel County chapter of the Sons of Liberty and a leading opponent of the 1765 Stamp Act.[2] The article called Chase "a busy, reckless incendiary, a ringleader of mobs, a foul-mouthed and inflaming son of discord and faction, a common disturber of the public tranquility". Chase responded with an open letter accusing Steuart and the others of "vanity...pride and arrogance", and of being brought to power by "proprietory influence, court favour, and the wealth and influence of the tools and favourites who infest this city." [3]
In 1772 Charles Carroll of Carrollton engaged in a debate conducted through the Maryland Gazette, maintaining the right of the colonies to control their own taxation. Writing in the Gazette under the pseudonym "First Citizen," he became a prominent spokesman against the governor's proclamation increasing legal fees to state officers and Protestant clergy. Opposing Carroll in these written debates and writing as "Antillon" was Daniel Dulany the Younger, a noted lawyer and loyalist politician. [4] [5] In these debates, Carroll argued that the government of Maryland had long been the monopoly of four families, the Ogles, the Taskers, the Bladens and the Dulanys, with Dulany taking the contrary view.[5] Eventually word spread of the true identity of the two combatants, and Carroll's fame and notoriety began to grow. [6] Dulany soon resorted to highly personal ad hominem attacks on "First Citizen", and Carroll responded, in statesmanlike fashion, with considerable restraint, arguing that when Antilles engaged in "virulent invective and illiberal abuse, we may fairly presume, that arguments are either wanting, or that ignorance or incapacity know not how to apply them".[6]
Today, The Capital has a circulation of 50,000 and a website, hometownannapolis.com (which is also accessible via capitalonline.com).
After the death of Philip Merrill, Landmark Communications took full control of The Capital's parent company Capitol-Gazette Communications.
On January 3, 2008, it was reported that the family-owned Landmark Communications, parent company of The Capital, was for sale.[7]
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