Greenbelt newspaper restores memorial dogwood for longtime editor Elaine Nicholson

A pink dogwood went back into the ground outside the Greenbelt News Review office on April 13, restoring a memorial to Elaine Skolnik Nicholson and the newsroom legacy she helped build. The original tree had died after being vandalized, and the replacement now stands on the grassy bank between the Community Center parking lot and the Roosevelt Center parking lot, beside a white dogwood for her husband, Al Skolnik.

The new planting carries more weight than a simple landscaping fix. Nicholson joined the Greenbelt News Review staff in 1954 and began with the “Our Neighbors” column, then spent nearly six decades at the paper as a reporter, news editor and board president. After Al Skolnik died in 1977, she succeeded him as president of the board and later took on the news editor job she created.

That history reaches back to one of Greenbelt’s most consequential civic fights. In 1966, the paper and Alfred M. Skolnik were hit with a $2 million libel suit over reporting on two city council meetings. Four years later, in May 1970, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously vindicated the Greenbelt News Review in Bresler v. Greenbelt News Review, a landmark First Amendment decision that affirmed the paper’s right to report on local government.

For Greenbelt, the dogwood also reflects a deeper institutional story. The Greenbelt News Review was founded in 1937 as a volunteer cooperative and has been published weekly without interruption ever since. In a time when many communities have seen local watchdogs shrink or disappear, the memorial underscored how much residents have relied on the paper not just to record events, but to preserve the city’s memory and hold public business to account.

Nicholson’s service reached beyond the newsroom. She and Al moved to Greenbelt with their children in 1952, and she served on the Greenbelt Park and Recreation Advisory Board, was president of the Co-op Nursery School and vice president of the Co-op kindergarten. In 1974, Greenbelt Labor Day Festival officials named the couple Outstanding Citizens of Greenbelt.

The city and the paper had already marked her contributions before her death on January 15, 2021, at age 95. A luncheon at the Greenbelt Marriott on May 30, 2015, drew 70 people to honor her retirement and nearly six decades of work. The restored dogwood now places that record of service back in public view, outside the office where so much of Greenbelt’s civic history was written.