The Star Democrat is a daily newspaper (except for Saturday) published in Easton, Maryland. It serves five counties on Maryland's Eastern Shore: Kent, Queen Anne's, Caroline, Dorchester, and Talbot. The current editor is Denise Riley.
The Star Democrat, in one incarnation or the other, has been in print since 1799. It began as The Star. In 1896 it merged with a rival newspaper, The Democrat, to become The Star-Democrat. It expanded from a county weekly to a regional weekday paper in 1974 and added a Sunday edition in 1988. A website, www.stardem.com, made its debut in 1996.
Recently, as region political demographics have changed, the word "Democrat" has been de-emphasized in the newspaper logo; Talbot County, where the newspaper is published, is one of two Republican-majority counties on the Eastern Shore. The hyphen separating "Star" from "Democrat" has also been phased out.