This book is a product of collaboration among men and women who worked for the Baltimore Sun in a period that many consider to be the last golden age of newspaper journalism. We are grateful for the willingness of so many accomplished reporters, editors, and cartoonists to contribute to our project, which has been a labor of love. They have not only produced fine chapters, but they have also gracefully offered editorial counsel where it was needed and, when asked, critically read the work of others in this volume.
Several colleagues deserve special mention. The guidance of Joseph R. L. Sterne was important in getting the project off the ground. G. Jefferson Price III—reporter, editor, and editorial writer during his long career at the paper—applied the wealth of his unmatched institutional memory to reviewing our chapters. William F. Schmick III, former city editor with a long family connection to the paper, provided valuable counsel.
We are grateful for the indispensable assistance of librarians at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University, the Peabody Library, the Enoch Pratt Free Library, and the Albert S. Cook Library at Towson University. Of particular importance were Thomas Beck, curator of special collections at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, who made available the unpublished financial ledgers of the Baltimore Sun from 1837 to 1979; James Stimpert, research librarian at Johns Hopkins special collections, who provided access to more than a thousand editorial cartoons by Edmund Duffy and Tom Flannery; and finally Vincent Fitzpatrick, curator of the Mencken Collection at the Enoch Pratt Free Library, whose cooperation was important. At the Sun we relied heavily on Paul McCardell, the chief librarian, and Anne Lepore, director of the Baltimore Sun Media Group.
We have benefited from the patient guidance of Rowman & Littlefield’s editors in American government, American history, and public policy, especially Jon Sisk, executive editor.