The Howard County
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VOL.15, NO.5
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I N S I D E …
Beaches abound on the British Virgin Islands, but so do opportunities for boating and learning history page 10
Columbia resident Ricardo Whitaker launched the Guilford Gazette in 2011 and gradually expanded its focus to cover the entire county. It morphed last year into the web-only Howard Courier, which covers local politics, sports and more.
paper founded in the 1940s. During his time at the Spotlight, in 1979 and 1981, Whitaker learned how to write headlines, conduct interviews, lay out the newspaper and prepare it for weekly publication — all on a manual typewriter. Though he left journalism to do social work and “bounced around,” working as a buyer for Lockheed Martin and the Railway Products Group in Baltimore, he was drawn back to the field. He tried a few times to start a newspaper in D.C. before
moving to Howard County in 2009.
Making local connections
Whitaker’s outreach to county residents began with a search for a good school system for his two sons. When he moved to Howard County, he noticed a disparity between white and minority families. Some parents didn’t necessarily have access to resources or know how to operate within
ARTS & STYLE
Toby’s current production of The Music Man brings the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical (and especially the 1962 movie) to life page 19
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News man covers the county
By Hannah Collins In a world of disappearing small-town newspapers, a new source of news has emerged in Howard County. The Howard Courier is an independent, web-based news platform that endeavors to report on local happenings with integrity and without bias. Founded by Ricardo Whitaker, the Courier is less than a year old and has already provided Howard County and surrounding areas with information on local crime and justice, sports, entertainment and more. “A newspaper for me is about caring for the community,” said Whitaker, 64, of Columbia. “Our aim is not to go head-to-head with the Baltimore Sun or the Baltimore Banner,” he said, emphasizing that the Courier’s “niche is local coverage.” Whitaker was hooked on journalism from a young age. Growing up in Washington, D.C., he and his classmates had the opportunity to visit the U.S. Capitol, where they met with a senator. Whitaker recalled that the local news affiliate was late to the meeting. “I was like, ‘This is not good news coverage,’” he laughed. “So we had to reenact the meeting. That gave me a bad impression about journalism, which I was starting to get interested in. I was reading Newsweek every week, the Washington Post, and so forth.” Despite this first impression, Whitaker continued to pursue journalism. At Allegheny College, he took every elective course that had to do with writing and interned at the Inter-High Connection, the newspaper of the D.C.-based Lemuel A. Penn Center (a now-defunct high school), to fulfill the college writing requirement. But Whitaker credits his entire newspaper education to the time he spent writing for the Capitol Spotlight, a Black-owned
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