From Hunt Valley to the Rockies: Why Maryland’s Power Players Are Betting on Substack
Sinclair Broadcast Group and Annapolis veteran Damian O’Doherty couldn’t be more different—yet both just proved where the real fight for Maryland’s political narrative has moved.
If you want to know where real political influence lives in Maryland right now, don’t look at local TV ratings, and don’t look at your Facebook feed. Look at your inbox.
For decades, controlling the narrative in Annapolis meant buying airtime on WBFF (Fox 45) or placing an op-ed in The Baltimore Sun. Today, two vastly different fixtures of the Maryland political ecosystem have underscored a quiet revolution in how influence is built, shaped, and sold in this state.
First came the corporate heavyweight move out of Hunt Valley. Sinclair Broadcast Group—long the favorite partisan foil of Maryland Democrats and the loudest megaphone in conservative local television—teamed up with New Media to launch The National Press on Substack. Backed by a roster of roughly 1,200 local journalists across more than 60 markets and anchored by daily morning briefings and video programming, Sinclair is betting it can repackage over-the-air local reporting into a direct-to-consumer subscription product.
