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Columbia at50 Media in the New Town: Communications Part of Building Community; The Flier and All the Rest This is the fourth part in a series of 12 Post’s Howard Weekly. There were other There were urban TV stations, most In October 1970, after much back and monthly essays over the next year leading publications along the way, The Business of them part of the three major networks, forth, Howard Research and Development, up to Columbia’s 50th birthday celebra- Monthly among them. broadcast over the airwaves to antennas. HRD, the Rouse division managing the tion next June. But the paper that would become the And radio, the early 20th century inven- new town, announced that Time-Life had dominant news source for Columbia’s first tion, was available almost everywhere. been granted a franchise to establish ca- By Len Lazarick quarter-century was that puny little free All these systems were regulated by ble television in Columbia. But the cable “shopper” that started on a dining room the government at the federal or state level, franchises were still under local control, Tom Graham’s decision to move from table. with a complicated set of licensing. and Time-Life backed out when it balked The Howard County Times to the Colum- Some of the planners at the Rouse at provisions in the Howard County leg- bia Flier was a bit puzzling to me as I vis- Planning for Co. wanted its own radio station, but that islation. A local group won the rights in a ited him and the new planned community didn’t happen until WLMD, a Laurel sta- partnership with Warner Communications. for the first time in early 1973. Communications tion, set up a small studio in the mall in The Howard franchise was sold to Storer After 14 months, Tom was leaving Communications is one of the thinner 1979. It lasted only a couple of years. Cable, which became Comcast in 1993. the well-established Times that looked volumes in the many Green Books at the Columbia’s central location in the like a traditional newspaper for the mag- Columbia Archives that document the -Washington corridor put it at Local Programming meticulous planning and proposals for all the edge of both these big media markets. azine-sized Columbia startup that looked Andy Barth moved to Columbia in Au- aspects of Columbia life. The available television channels were like it came out of a typewriter — because gust 1971, the week it did. “The whole subject of communica- used up, with only slim possibilities for a It turned out to be a smart decision that tions in the planning of Columbia can only UHF TV channel and an AM radio station. See Columbia at 50, page 18 gave Tom a quarter-century of employment, be described as a mystical religious icon opportunity and influence. He was attracted which everybody revered with poignant by the enthusiasm of the new editor, Jean regularity,” wrote Wallace Hamilton, Moon. Jean says she recognized that Tom Rouse’s director of institutional planning. was better at reporting on zoning than she “‘We’ve got to think about communica- was, and she also offered a small raise. tions,’ people would say. But nobody ever “Despite that, I didn’t say yes until really did anything about it, except write I had a face-to-face with Zeke Orlinsky, long reports for longer conferences and the publisher,” Tom said. Tom’s future got more and more people into the act to wife, Mary Kay Sigaty, “was working as a share the general confusion.” bank teller at the time, and she had warned “We got intrigued with technology me that the Flier’s checks sometimes for technology’s sake and lost track of bounced. When I asked him about this, function,” Hamilton observed. Zeke said that would never be a problem Although their focus was on technol- with my paycheck, and it wasn’t.” ogy, the goal of the planners remained Maureen Kelley and I moved to Co- the same as for the village centers and lumbia a few months later, in June 1973. neighborhood gathering places — encour- Maureen, newly graduated from nursing aging community life and spirit. The early school at Boston College, where all four of planners reached out to the companies that us had met, got a job as a visiting nurse on were developing futuristic technologies her first interview. I got a job with another that would become the driving forces of newspaper in town, Columbia Life, which American communications in the final was supposedly “recapitalizing.” decades of the 20th century — cable TV Columbia Life survived for another and then the Internet. But the planners issue or two and then died without a trace. were 10, 20, even 30 years early as they I sued the publisher for pay. All I got was contemplated interactive TV loops and an office desk and chair. other forms of electronic two-way com- Other newspapers have come and gone munications. — Columbia Villager, the News Columbi- For those under 40 and those who an (an edition of the conservative Central have forgotten, it’s worth refreshing what News), The Columbia Times (an communications was like in the 1960s. edition of The Howard County Times), and There were telephones, an invention a bit later, the Columbia Forum. In the of the late 19th century, but they were all following decades, dailies would enter the what we now call “landlines,” connected local market with the Howard Sun and the by copper wires, owned and operated by a single local monopoly we called “the An array of Columbia newspapers from 1973, taken from the files of the Columbia © Copyright by Len Lazarick telephone company.” Archives. Photo by Len Lazarick Page 18 October 2016 The Business Monthly

Columbia at 50 tabloid it became in 1974, growing to 64 Zeke Orlinsky and his weekly “Publisher’s certainly gave no hint of the powerhouse pages. After I became associate editor in Note.” But love it or hate it, people read it would become. from page 17 1975, I covered education, business and it. At one point, a survey found that 92% “I got pissed at something in the How- politics. In 1976, I wrote the cover story of Columbians read the paper that landed ard County Times,” recalled Orlinsky in opened, conveniently located between for its fi rst 100-page issue, a piece titled free every Thursday on their doorsteps and an interview last month from his home in Baltimore where he worked as a reporter “Banned Books” on efforts to ban some driveways. Westport, Conn. “I didn’t have a vision.” for WMAR TV (Channel 2) and The fi rst issue of theFli- his wife’s job in Silver Spring. er was indeed a fl yer — eight “At fi rst it was just conve- pages of legal paper folded nient; then we became converts” with a Merriweather Post Pa- to the Columbia vision of an in- vilion ad on the front, ads for tegrated, inclusive community, cars and tires, and a calendar of said Barth, now press secretary events. This fi rst issue on Co- to Howard County Executive lumbia’s June birthday in 1969 Allan Kittleman. was reprinted several times For two or three years, over the years as a reminder WMAR had a bureau located of how far the newspaper had in the Exhibit Center next to come. Lake Kittamaqundi staffed by When Jean Moon joined reporter Glenn Cox. the fledgling operation as a “TV was very, very com- writer two years later, free petitive then,” said Barth. He circulation had grown to 9,000, eventually spent 35 years at and there was real news in WMAR before retiring to run the Flier, but they were still for Congress in 2006. cutting and pasting the type- “Columbia was a story at that written copy on a dining room point” as the new town grew, he table. said. “We did a birthday story At the time, Orlinsky pretty much every year.” wrote: “To refl ect the growth Many Baltimore TV per- of a new city like Columbia sonalities made Columbia their is to meet new challenges. It home, recalled Barth: the late calls on a publisher to throw Al Sanders, Denise Koch, Dick away the old and tired concept Gelfman, Jeff Hager, and brief- of journalism. Journalism is ly, a young Oprah Winfrey, more than just information and among others. news. Journalism should excite Throughout the years, How- and guide a community.” ard County and Columbia have That statement was still been part of a tug of war for eye- being pointed to 20 years later balls between rival TV stations in a history of the paper given for this lucrative, high-income to new staff members. market. Moon, who had come to There were many TV sto- Columbia with her husband ries about the progressive ideas Bob for his job as an architect embodied in the Columbia con- at the Rouse Co., was totally cept, such as interfaith religious on board with the concept of centers, but “at some point it community journalism — “that stopped being new,” said Barth. we weren’t dailies” and the Yet, for all that, these were mission was to “play a role in stories done for a wider regional the community,” she recalled audience. recently. In its first 30 years, the By 1973, Moon was editor Columbia community relied on and general manager, she had the oldest of the mass media, Patuxent Publishing staff, including Columbia Flier, sometime in the 1980s in the foyer of the Flier building. hired Graham, and the staff newspapers, and for several In the lower center are Publisher Zeke Orlinsky and General Manager Jean Moon. Editor Tom Graham is had grown several times. By decades that medium was the at the very bottom right; Len Lazarick is second person to Graham’s right. Photographer unknown. the time I joined the staff on Columbia Flier, from its start July 31, 1975, it was operating delivered free to all the households in books from school libraries. This was not your traditional news- out of a building on Route 108. It moved town. We now know that we were all work- paper produced by traditional newspaper again to Wilde Lake Village Center, and ing in the heyday of the newspaper indus- people. Its models were magazines and the in spring of 1978, we moved into the Flier The Flier try — not just in Columbia or Maryland, alternative city papers that grew out of the building on Little Patuxent Parkway, an Two years after Columbia Life fold- but in the United States. Advertising rev- ’60s counterculture. Its editors didn’t just unusual building designed by Bob Moon, ed and two non-journalism jobs later, a enues were bulging, profi ts were balloon- read The Washington Post and The New standing out amid the town’s bland ar- position fi nally opened at the Columbia ing, staffi ng soared at every publication. York Times, but The New Yorker and The chitecture, with its white metal sides and Flier, where I had done some freelance There were people who loved the Fli- Village Voice. It was in sharp contrast to sloping fronts of glass. writing. I had already helped the Flier er; there were people who hated the Flier, its stodgy competitors, like the Sun. There were no crusty old editors move from its small fl exi-size into the particularly the liberal bent of its publisher The Flier’s sketchy origins in 1969 See Columbia at 50, page 19

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Columbia at 50 signed “Publisher’s Note” — none of this easier and more attractive. wind of it. unsigned editorial page stuff of the old More advertising meant more money, Who were these guys at Whitney Com- from page 18 school — and then there were the letters, more pages, more stories to fi ll them, more munications? Turns out these guys — and so many letters from Columbians, often staff to write and illustrate them, and more yes, they were all guys — were some of looking over our shoulders, telling us “we complaining about Zeke’s emotional di- listings — and made it a more attractive the classiest in the business. The chairman, don’t do that here.” Jean and Zeke — and atribes or other coverage that pushed the target for acquisition. Walter Thayer, had been the publisher of we often talked about them that way in this envelope, like the time we put the full-page the vaunted New York Herald Tribune, and family-like operation — were still in their image of a mammogram on the cover to The Sale of the Flier the president was John Prescott, former 30s; Tom and I were in our 20s, and the illustrate a story on breast cancer. The night of Nov. 7, 1978, a major president of The Washington Post Co. Mil- staff was of similar age. While Tom and I The Flier was the way the community gubernatorial election, I was covering the lionaire John Hay Whitney had founded did take photos, we eventually brought on talked to itself, understood itself, remem- returns in the Kiwanis Hall in Ellicott City, the company. a staff of talented photographers who made It was one of the best things that ever that a hallmark of the paper in future years. happened to us. Jean and Zeke were left The Flier was more than just a writers’ fully in charge. A year later we bought The paper. What’s striking going through boxes Howard County Times and other papers of old clips I dragged out for this series in the chain. I got to spend full-time in was how closely we covered this new com- Annapolis during the 90-day sessions as munity — the opening of restaurants, the political editor. When John Hay Whitney closing of stores, the community dustups, died in 1982, the partners created a work- the arguments over tot lots and door colors, ing fellowship that sent Tom Graham and the nitty-gritty of everyday life. While then me to Paris for a year at the Interna- there were wonderful photo spreads and tional Herald Tribune, where Whitney had long features, there was also column after been the managing partner of a three-way column of “notices” about routine events ownership split with the Post and The New and meetings. York Times. Because of Jean Moon’s proclivities, The Flier kept chugging along, and in there was massive coverage of the per- 1988, our newspaper group, now called forming arts, not just in Columbia (Mer- Patuxent Publishing, bought Times Pub- riweather Post Pavilion was going strong lishing in Towson and its fi ve newspapers, as a venue for big acts), but in Washington including the Towson Times and The Jeffer- and Baltimore too. sonian. I became managing editor of seven There was local sports galore including Baltimore County papers. the long-time weekly column by Stan Ber “We never recovered from that called “Bits and Pieces,” a column that WLMD had a radio studio in the lower level of the Columbia Mall in 1979. Photo by purchase,” said Jean Moon in a recent predated my arrival and survived long after WLMD engineer Mike Doughney. conversation. In hindsight, she said, “We I left. Stan, like many of the other writers, overpaid for those newspapers” and strug- was community bred. His day job was at bered itself. and a reporter from the Howard County gled to make them generate enough return the National Security Agency where he did The advertising fl owed in — all the Times asked me my reaction to the sale on that investment. what can never be disclosed and where they newspaper staples — cars, groceries, real of the Columbia Flier. Management began making cuts in the answered the phones cryptically with the estate, classifi eds. “The smartest thing was I was fl oored. Sale, what sale? Jean 1990s as Maryland experienced a harsher last four digits of the extension you called. not selling ads by the inch,” as dailies did, had tried to have me tracked down that recession than the rest of the country. In Most of us lived in Columbia. We were producing those odd-shaped page wells, night — this was decades before cell 1995, a Whitney Communications partner part of the community, and the community Orlinsky said. The Flier sold eighth-, phones — so I would not learn of the deal and Zeke told Jean Moon she needed to was part of the paper. Page three had the quarter- and half-pages that made design from our local competitors who had gotten See Columbia at 50, page 20

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Columbia at 50 ard Sun with a separate, and lower paid, staff that competed strongly with the Flier from page 19 for stories and advertising. The Sun tried various confi gurations of separate Howard go, and in June 1997, six months after County sections for years after it bought I left, Patuxent and the Flier were sold the Flier and Howard County Times, and to and its new owner, still has a thin section in the Sunday paper, Times-Mirror. though the content is often shared. “I really don’t think [the sale] will The Washington Post also had the change anything” about the newspapers, Howard Weekly, part of a plan to open bu- Orlinsky told me for a story I wrote about reaus in all the counties it served. It leased the sale in The Business Monthly. “It’s not premium space in downtown Columbia, in their interest to screw it up.” but never fi lled it. It was later replaced by Orlinsky stayed on as a consultant for the Howard Extra. The Post, for which I a year, having twice sold the same paper worked part-time on the national copy at a handsome profi t. He was wrong about desk for eight years, and Tom Graham nothing changing. has for 16 years, has largely abandoned Orlinsky says now he had seen some of the handwriting on the wall a few years before as the Internet began to spread. “I didn’t understand it,” but “I knew that it was only a period of time [before] newspapers would lose those categories” of classifi eds From left, former Business Monthly — employment ads, real estate and cars. Publisher Carole Pickett Ross; former What began as small dips in revenue in Columbia Association President Maggie the 1990s became a steady downhill slide Brown, who died in 2010; and former and then, in 2008, as the Great Recession Business Monthly Editor-in-Chief Judy hit, newspaper revenues fell off the cliff. Tripp, who died just last month. As advertising evaporated, pages and coverage were cut, as were the reporters Baltimore Sun Media Group, with copy and editors who produced them. shared among all. In the Flier you can read Times-Mirror sold the Sun and the articles you may have already read in the local papers to the Tribune Co., which Sun, or the other way around. went private and then bankrupt for years, The only locally owned and operated and now has the god-awful name of tronc. news outlet is in your hands: The Business Over the years it has decimated staff and Monthly. Started in February 1993 by Ed closed offi ces, including the Flier building and Carole Pickett as the Columbia Busi- on Little Patuxent Parkway in 2011. ness Journal, it was geared to just a sliver The Flier is now run by editors in the of the community. It became The Business Sun’s downtown Baltimore building. What Monthly nine months later after Orlinsky were once several independent news oper- registered all the other likely publication Oprah Winfrey lived at the Cove Apartments in Columbia during her time at WJZ in ations in the city and the fi ve counties that names, and the Picketts decided not to Baltimore. surround it are now under one owner, the fi ght him. Carole grew up as Carole Ashbaugh local coverage under the ownership of in western Howard County, married Ed Amazon’s Jeff Bezos. and had three children at a very young Many Columbia residents mourn the age. By the time they returned to Howard loss of the Flier they remember from County, they had run several newspapers years ago, a fat, thriving community in Vermont, and radio stations as well. newspaper operation. Jean Moon, who Carole, now Carole Ross, says it was created a new career for herself as a public her idea to start a business paper here, with relations consultant to some of the biggest Ed as editor. When Ed soon after decided organizations in Columbia, said, “People also to launch the Columbia Daily Tribune, complain all the time” about how thin the that was the last straw for Carole after Flier is. But she said those are people of many, many straws with her spendthrift “our generation,” meaning the over-65 hubby. crowd, bemoaning the good old days. She called it quits on the marriage, but “I don’t feel a concern about creating kept The Business Monthly, $68,000 in community anymore,” Moon said. “People debts and all. But aside from Ed’s spend- see no need for a community newspaper.” ing, “It made money from the very fi rst Pat Kennedy, now 82, president of issue,” she said. Columbia Association from 1972 to 1998, For years, one of The Business Month- is one of those who mourns the loss of the ly’s gems were the columns by Dennis Flier, which he saw as crucial in creating Lane, ostensibly about his fi eld of com- a vibrant community. mercial real estate, but really wise and The building that housed that crucial funny commentaries on public life. Under community builder has sat empty for sev- the moniker WordBones, he became one eral years. Howard County Executive Ken of the best and most provocative bloggers Ulman wanted to turn it into a business on local life and added a podcast with incubator, but for the Kittleman admin- attorney Paul Skalny to his media chops istration, the price tag was too high. It until he was brutally murdered in 2013. may now be torn down and replaced with Carole sold the paper in 2002 to Becky “affordable housing” as part of downtown Mangus and Cathy Yost. I worked with Columbia’s revitalization. both sets of publishers from 1998 to 2006, For Kennedy, the tearing down of the when I became State House bureau chief Flier building stands as “a metaphor for of the Baltimore Examiner, which covered the decline of the newspaper industry” as Howard County in its typically haphazard a whole. way, with its usually erratic free delivery, until its untimely demise in 2009. Next month in Columbia at 50: Politics and Governance Not the Only Game in Len Lazarick (Len@MarylandReporter. Town com) has lived and worked in Columbia The Flier was never the only game in as a journalist for more than 40 years. He town. The Sun had an Ellicott City bureau is currently the editor and for many years with Mike Clark reporting publisher of MarylandRe- there; the News-American and Evening porter.com, a news website Sun were represented too. about state government In the early 1980s, attempting to and politics, and a po- capture more suburban readers across the litical columnist for The Baltimore region, the Sun set up the How- Business Monthly.