Word To The Wise

The good news is that Salisbury City Council Vice President Gary Comegys did not win the mayoral elecion. The bad news is that his term is not up until 2011....darn. Now a message to Mayor-elect Jim Ireton, do not tick off the blogs. Not only do not tick off the blogs, but do not mess with the newspapers, radio or television. They are all media. Your predecessor did not get this and quickly became a national laughing stock in her wanning days. Although I do Mayor Barrie Tilghman credit in not naming anyone specific like for City Council Chairman Mike Dunn did walking out the door.

The don't mess with the media rule applies to blogs, especially on the eastern shore where different outlets are spread throughout three states. In addition, there is only one major newspaper and two television stations that is covering this vast region. In other words, a small market, even though the WBOC-TV (Channel 16) NewsPlex puts anything on this side of the bay to shame and we have three network owned stations between DC and Baltimore.

As we have seen over the past couple of years, the Eastern Shore blogosphere has exploded with some blogs, such as this one, earning journalistic integrity. Blogging in ngeneral has became chic with mainstream outlets adding blogs to their site. Within the past year, The Daily Times, The Washington Post and The Baltimore Sun have added blogs to their site. Now that the blogosphere has evolved, it is real easy to point out which ones are trying to offer credible stories and commentary. It's a pretty safe bet that sites that spend a fair amount of time attacking other sites are not a good source of news.

My favorite sites to laugh at from the shore are those who spend time attacking Salisbury News, but that is because when they cannot come up with anything else to say, they fall on the fact that Joe lives in Delaware and I've been to his office in downtown Salisbury last year. I should also point out the fact that one does not have to be based in a city to cover their news. WJLA-TV is licensed to Washington, but their studios and offices are across the river (and up the street from my day job) in Rosslyn, Virginia. WMAR-TV is licensed to Baltimore, but their offices are just outside of the city in Towson. In addition, other markets like Salisbury have similar set-ups when it comes to their media outlets.

Back to my main point, which is more of a warning to Mayor-elect Jim Ireton. Please treat the media better than your predecessor. Please show them common courtesy. There is a difference between constructive criticism and personal attacks. Tilghman thought the former was the latter. I assure, if you were they Mayor of DC or Baltimore, the criticism, if any, will be worse....so says history.