A couple of weeks ago, a few of us sat down with Baltimore Sun Today Editor Andrew Ratner for about an hour-and-a-half. A Harford County resident himself, Ratner had been following The Dagger for some time and was interested in writing a story about us.
“The Dagger, a local news Web site, doesn’t do newspaper writing and reporting (or you could say newspapering) the way it is taught in journalism school. But it may be a glimpse into the way news will be covered in the future.”
The story continues with some interesting quotes from former Aberdeen Mayor Fred Simmons – “They also have people embedded in those places, and some of them write under other names;” ...Continue Reading
There are plenty of great local feuds in Harford County, but my personal favorite is the long-running war waged between Aberdeen City Council President Mike Hiob and the local media.
Now the two combatants are at it again. During a recent Aberdeen City Council meeting, Hiob read aloud from a letter he penned in which he criticizes the newspaper’s rhetoric regarding annexation.
Last Christmas I mailed a good friend of mine, an editor at the Aegis and Record newspapers, a gift. He mailed it back, unopened, with a curt note attached.
Maybe this was to be expected. About a month-and-a-half earlier, we’d allowed some local businesspeople to run an ad for The Dagger in The Record newspaper – a rude, punkish shot across the bow from a news upstart to the local established media. And, we’d written a story based on court documents suggesting that someone at The Aegis may have given favorable ad rates to a political group. The story was, without a doubt, speculative; but it was far milder than some of the despotic opinion-making I’d seen go on in my time at the paper.
The prolonged battle between Aberdeen City Councilman Mike Hiob and local newspaper The Record continued this week with the politician getting in the latest jab – a list of the top “uses” for the newspaper he read during Monday night’s city council meeting, which include wrapping fish, washing windows and checking to see how many headlines were ripped from The Dagger.
This war of attrition has been going on nearly since Hiob took office in November 2003 and was likely fueled by Hiob’s dislike for what he has called “sensational headlines” and “wrong information” in the paper and the newspaper’s dislike of Hiob’s propensity for verbose, minute and typically unwarranted/unjustified criticism – or nitpicking.
Politics, n. A strife of interests masquerading as a contest of
principles. The conduct of public affairs for private advantage.
-Ambrose Bierce, The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
Things started turning weird here at The Dagger this past week, and after kicking it around amongst ourselves for a few days, we’ve decided to open the books and let you all take a look.
First things first. A group of local businessmen, the prospective developers of the Wetlands Golf Course, bought a roughly $250, bumper sticker-size ad in The Record newspaper today to promote The Dagger.
