Annapolis Capital Punishment

The outgoing mayor of Salisbury, the largest city on the Eastern Shore (except for summer weekends of course...) recently delivered her state of the city report, and toward the end, also took local bloggers to task, as did Ellen "O" recently. I don't know much about Salisbury or the mayor but I do know a little bit about the blogs there, and one in particular. I suspect that this mayor may be on to something when she said:

"When people are afraid to step forward, run for office, speak on relevant issues, write
letters to the editor expressing individual opinions, then the future is in jeopardy. I leave
this job, an adventure that I have enjoyed with a firm conviction that the people of this
great city need to stand up and say, 'No More'."

She has some really opinionated, aggressive and contentious bloggers and apparently some antagonistic council members, making Ellen "O"'s situation seem like a picnic. What Mayor Moyer needs to understand is that the two bloggers that concern her, that is CP and Muckraker, employ normative journalistic standards. Muckraker and CP are both trained journalists with experience within what is still being called the mainstream media. We check facts and we will correct mistakes that are brought to our attention. We strive for fairness and we contact her, her PIO and appropriate staff for information, comments and for their side of the story. We are not anonymous and we try to present a clear picture of what is going on. In fact, CP eschews anonymous commenters and takes them to task for lack of accountability while they beat up those who are identified in the limelight every day. Muckraker gets public documents, searches through records and tells the story based on the paper trail. CP provides interpretation and analysis, adding personal knowledge of and familiarity with the issues.

As for the Salisbury mayor's comments about fear of stepping forward, running for office etc., I cannot speak about her experiences. However, Ellen "O" knows that CP attends and testifies at city council meetings, has run for office and made many contributions to improving our community, including being a public servant and an inveterate volunteer. She also knows that I have supported and defended her on numerous issues and she knows, if she has any sense of fairness at all, that I do what I do to engage citizens and not discourage them from participating in our civic affairs. I took off the gloves and called for her resignation when she called me and my neighbors "rhetorical bomb throwers" as you have heard me say repeatedly. What she does not know is that I called three of her closest associates and urged them to ask the mayor to make a public apology before I called for her resignation. Apology never came. Calls for her resignation did.

It is our mayor who is adversarial and uncivil, and she has demonstrated this to most of her constituents repeatedly, with or without bloggers.

See the Salisbury mayor's speech, especially page 9 at Salisbury Steak.

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