An Eastern Shore blogging narrative

I wrote part of this post back in February as part of another post about infighting amongst the local blogging community. For Carnival of Maryland 7 I’ve decided to update the article and make a few changes as I go. I originally wrote it in a fit of anger “off the cuff” so to speak so now I have the opportunity to review what I wrote and straighten out the narrative as required. In it, I’m looking at the lower part of the Eastern Shore since I’m not too familiar with any sites based north of Easton.

To begin with, I’ll cite myself. In April of 2005 I started my original blog called ttown’s right wing conspiracy. There’s a little bit of history before that but most of the local websites have sprung up after that date.

The first local blog I became aware of was Duvafiles. I occasionally read it when I first heard about it in the early days of 2005, but what got me started going there on a regular basis was the hullabaloo that May when Bill Duvall made his infamous “wetback” comment that got him in a lot of hot water. This comment cost him a position on the state judicial commission. Being of fair mind, I was curious about the context that it was written in, and I enjoyed his use of the various character names for local personalities. I have to say he was the pioneer who took the arrows and seeing how he did his website inspired me to start my own.

In the summer of 2005, I discovered the original Delmarva Dealings site along with the Justice For All? site and started perusing those, commenting occasionally.  At that time there were only a handful of local sites (including mine), plus one that wasn’t truly local but run by a local native who lived upstate called Goldwater’s Oracle. Now it’s known as Gunpowder Chronicle. Delmarva Dealings left us for awhile during the summer of 2006 but returned as the campaign season bloomed. This website is a collaboration of several writers who write under various pen names, with “Cato” being the most prolific.

But the sleepy nature of those early days was about to change. During the fall of 2005, a certain commenter and photographer who posted frequently with Charles Jannace (the person behind Justice For All?) became fairly well known. His name was Joe Albero. Together Jannace and Albero blew the lid off problems at the Salisbury Wastewater Treatment Plant and at the Salisbury Zoo. And it can be argued that in the next year or so both these men became local celebrities and parlayed their newly found fame in different directions. With help from Joe Albero, Charles Jannace entered the political arena as a write-in candidate for Wicomico County Executive; and spinning off from Jannace’s website Albero branched out into his own site, originally known as National Joe-A-Graphic but evolving into what’s now known as Salisbury News.

But it wasn’t until close to the end of the year, after a nasty divorce of sorts between Jannace and Albero, that many of these new bloggers came online.

And 2006 saw a number of new players come into the Eastern Shore blogging scene.    Crabbin’ and Delmar DustPan (from the city too big for one state) were among the most-read out of about 8-10 blogs that debuted in the early part of 2006, and both are still around. Many of these 2006 vintage blogs focused on the real or perceived misdeeds of Joe Albero.

Several anti-Albero blogs (The Maryland Townie, Paranoia and the Homunculus Photographer, Joey Albero is an American Idol, and Yh8 were probably the biggest four during this timeframe) became bases on which to flame Albero while Joe worked on trying to “out” the people behind them. Most are still going, although Yh8 has gone off into other subjects and dropped its anti-Albero slant. Even now there continues to be new websites that are based solely on discussing the deeds (or misdeeds) of unquestionably the dominant personality of Eastern Shore blogging – most recently a site called Joe Albero is a Class Act.

Sadly, the wrapup of the 2006 election also spelled the end of Justice for All?, which was one of my favorite sites. Charles Jannace decided to focus his energies on things other than blogging (like his family). For that I don’t blame him but his regular commentary on events in the Salisbury area is missed. We’ve lost two other pretty good sites over the last year or so, Fertilizer for our Bay and Westside Wisdom. So the blogging world here saw its share of comings and goings in 2006.

Another facet of the local blogging scene is its foray into other media. Local radio host Bill Reddish began this back in 2005 as he started mentioning some of Bill Duvall’s Duvafiles posts on his morning radio program. Over the past couple years, he’s made mention of more posts he’s thought worthy from Duvafiles as well as from Delmarva Dealings and, a few times, I’ve been honored by mentions of my monoblogue posts on the air. In fact, “Cato” from Delmarva Dealings (aka local resident G.A. Harrison) is a semiregular interview guest on Reddish’s show, and I’ve had a handful of turns in the “hot seat” myself.

With bloggers being such a focus of the local political scene, another new local afternoon radio show, “Robinson on the Radio”, has retained Joe Albero as a guest several times (as well as myself on one occasion.) John Robinson also is a regular commenter on the local websites and operates his own site which focuses on his radio show. Even the print media has taken notice as earlier this year the Daily Times began to solicit comment and content from local internet users via its “Storychat” feature.

But the bread and butter of Eastern Shore blogging is the political realm. We have sites all over the political map, from the left-leaning integrity only matters sometimes and (to a lesser extent as far as political content) Objectivity and Observation to pretty strong right-wingers Crabbin’, Delmarva Dealings, WorcesterRight, and my website. We on the Shore tend to lean to the right, so the majority of the sites tend to work that way.

We made quite the impact on the last two local elections as a group. In 2006, the Wicomico County Executive race got a lot of play from the local websites. When GOP hopeful Ron Alessi won the primary over a candidate backed by Justice for All? writer Charles Jannace, Charles decided to jump in the race. Alessi had already rankled many in the local blogging world by terming them a “cancer” after several postings by Jannace and Joe Albero questioned Alessi’s role with the Salisbury Zoo and previous legal proceedings Alessi was involved with.

A much lengthier conflict has gone on between several of the local blogs and the Salisbury city government, in particular Mayor Barrie Tilghman. It has resulted in heavy coverage of issues that may have escaped notice without a vigilant set of ears to the ground. The wastewater treatment plant fiasco is one of many issues brought forth; others include a rash of graffiti pockmarking several downtown Salisbury buildings, questions on financial dealings involving former City Councilman Michael Dunn, and controversy over tax increment financing given to those developing the old Salisbury Mall site. In fact, Dunn laid some of the blame for his not seeking another term at the feet of local bloggers, and they were heavily invested in seeing a group of three candidates attempt to win City Council seats in this spring’s election.

In the 2007 Salisbury election, two of those three candidates were successful; however, City Council President Louise Smith (who was supported by most local bloggers) has proven to become a lightning rod for controversy because of what many percieve as poor financial management and too much willingness to raise taxes, unlike the two others who she was lumped with during the campaign.

But the Eastern Shore has caught up to the rest of the world as far as having an interesting and diverse palette of websites to read and choose from, in fact almost too many good ones. Three of our newest ones that I enjoy checking out are Shore Thing, Oceanshaman and A Woman’s Point of View. And I encourage comments on any I missed, I’m sure there’s a few out there but I think I got the ones worth mentioning anyway, maybe even the one who considers me a “yawn” most of the time. Can’t please everyone I guess.

Author: Michael

It's me from my laptop computer. View all posts by Michael