Wednesday, August 12, 2020
Editors and reporters at The Capital Gazette in Annapolis suffered another setback when they learned the newspaper’s owner, Tribune Publishing, is closing the office and newsroom.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we do not anticipate having employees that can work remotely coming back into the office for the remainder of the year and into 2021,” according to a statement from Tribune Publishing.
“With no clear path forward in terms of returning to work, and as the company evaluates its real estate needs in light of health and economic conditions brought about by the pandemic, we have made the difficult decision to permanently close the office.”
The Capital Gazette will continue to gather news and publish, but with employees working from their homes and filing stories from coffee shops and from their cars.
The newsroom was located on Bestgate Road when a gunman in June 2018 used a shotgun to kill five employees. After that, newspaper’s staff worked in a temporary newsroom at the University of Maryland’s Capital News Service bureau on Maryland Avenue, and then moved to its current newsroom near the Anne Arundel County Board of Education.
In addition to the Capital Gazette, Tribune is closing the offices of New York’s Daily News, the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, The Morning Call in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and the Carroll County Times in Maryland. The newspapers will continue to be published with employees working from home as they have been during the coronavirus pandemic.
The Tribune Publishing Company also publishes the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun, Virginia’s Daily Press and The Virginian-Pilot, and the Hartford Courant.