Ocean City News
company · active 1898-
A newspaper published at Ocean City, Maryland, quoted by the Washington Evening Star in February 1898 on plans for a regatta on Sinepuxent Bay — the earliest evidence this project has found of a newspaper produced in the town itself rather than at Snow Hill, Berlin or Pocomoke City. A man connected with the paper was simultaneously the local manager for John F. Waggaman, the Washington realtor who owned the Atlantic Hotel and the unsold plat, which makes the paper's independence a fair question. No file of it is known to be digitised.
In the record (2)
1898
Ocean City has its own newspaper: the Ocean City News, quoted by the Washington press in February 1898.
The Washington Evening Star of 9 February 1898: 'The Ocean City (Md.) News says that steps have been taken looking to a regatta on Sinepuxent Bay at Ocean City during the week following the National Association regatta at Philadelphia, July 22 and 23.' The Wilmington Evening Journal's Ocean City dispatch of 4 March identifies the man behind the regatta scheme as an officer of 'the News' who was also 'manager for John F. Waggaman' — so the town paper and the town's principal owner shared a hand. This is the earliest reference this campaign has found to a newspaper published at Ocean City itself; the county's news had until now come entirely from Snow Hill, Berlin and Pocomoke City. No file of the Ocean City News is known to be digitised. — 1898 FULL PASS, 2026-08-11 [reviewed]: Moves the paper's first attestation back a year and names its proprietor. The Washington Times of 14 August 1897 quotes it and says who ran it: "The Ocean City News, owned and very ably edited by Mr. John F. Waggaman, who has recently bought the Eastern Shore of Maryland, declares with emphasis and hauteur that there are no mosquitoes at Ocean City big enough to kill a man by one bite in his jugular vein." So the paper existed by August 1897, within four months of Waggaman buying the town, and it was his — a house organ for the estate he was auctioning in Washington that winter, not an independent local sheet. It should be read as advertising.
For twenty-three years everything we know about Ocean City has come from somebody else's paper. In 1898 the town finally had one of its own — and not a page of it survives online.
Source · checked 2026-08-06
1934 · 1934-12-17
The town's annual financial statement was printed by a paper called the Berlin Ocean City News
One line of the minutes of 17 December 1934: 'Printing of financial Statement was given to Berlin Ocean City News.' It is the only newspaper the 1934 council minutes name, and it matters beyond the printing bill: a town's statutory financial statement had to be published in a paper of general circulation in the county, so the entry identifies which local paper was carrying Ocean City's legal notices in 1934 — a year for which the Worcester County Library portal holds no county newspaper at all. The Ocean City News was founded in 1898; the 1934 masthead appears to be a merged Berlin-and-Ocean City title.
Unverified — sourced but not confirmed against a primary record.
Source · checked 2026-08-11