Another Annapolis Blog

One of my goals in Looking for Annapolis is to get in touch with Annapolitans who have been here a while. There are a number of good blogs on the area and we'll start adding links, one by one.

The first one I came across is 'Consciously Conscience - The inner thinking of an Annapolitan.' It is posted by Kate Roper, who is Chief Marketing Officer at Annapolis Wireless (they are the people who give Annapolis the free downtown wireless service and are making quite stir nationwide installing wireless at NASCAR races, for instance).

Kate's last blog post is on Governor O'Malley and the tax woes of Maryland - it is an interesting read!

Farewell to The Capital

I am no longer the Internet Director at The Capital, but plan to continue this blog as long as there is interest. The excitement and curiosity of discovering a new home is still there. There are so many good things about Annapolis and many fine people I have met and heard stories from.

Speaking of The Capital I wish everyone there well and much success. I hope that the impending sale of the newspaper goes well and Annapolis and Anne Arundel county have the same (or better) service from the hometown paper and the hometown Web sites associated with it.

Newspapers across the country are in a difficult time of transition now - but the value of a local paper to a hometown community cannot be measured. There will be a way through this transition. I believe we are in an historic time in media and cultural development.

HometownAnnapolis is in good hands with a good team.

Meanwhile I can be contacted at alan@alaneason.com. Feel free to email me and to add comments to this post.

Alan Eason

Great Time with the Boys and Girls Club

In the last blog post I told you about an exciting "Money Matters" show the youth of Annapolis are putting on WNAV every Sunday morning at 8:30 AM.

I was privileged to be able to go last Thursday to the club and interview Reginald Broddie, the Chief Professional Officer of the Anne Arundel clubs; and then go and film the taping of the show at WNAV under the leadership of Lawrence Huggins.

It was a great experience. The economic advisers who were on the show (sponsored by Charles Schwab) were a great help and the questions the young people were asking amazed me. They showed a lot of depth and comprehension of some difficult subjects. I can honestly say that I learned a lot about the mortgage crisis and got a much better view of the financial crisis the country is in.

We will be putting together a video soon from the shooting I did last week plus a take on the class that will be shot this week. Mr. Broddie said that he would like to take the video to the National Convention coming up in San Francisco in a few weeks, so we will hurry production.

This blog will be moving, but look for a link to the video here - wherever it ends up on the Net.

Smart youth in the center of Annapolis

There is a pretty exciting Annapolis project waiting for me and I am anxious to start.

Friday I went by the Bates Center Annapolis Boys and Girls Club looking for a video project. Reginald Broddie, the Chief Professional Officer of the five Boys and Girls Clubs in Anne Arundel County, invited me into his office and we talked. It seems that he and Larry Huggins, a fine young communications professional with the clubs, had just been talking about video that same day. We decided to do a project together and put it on HometownAnnapolis.com.

Reginald talked about another project - one that we could cover - and it is exciting. Perhaps you have heard of it. It is a radio show called "Money Matters," which is produced by young people in the clubs and aired on WNAV at 8:30 on Sunday mornings. It teaches "critical thinking," Reginald says.

He made a believer out of me. I can't wait to watch them produce the show and film the process.

Long ago I became familiar with a favorite saying of Alex Haley. He used to quote it often in Tennessee, as he went around giving speeches and teaching at UT:

"Find the good and praise it."

Haley was a consummate journalist and to him this principle seemed the pinnacle of the craft of writing. In following that maxim he brought a lot of energy to people trying to do right.

Reginald and Larry have the same energy. It is exciting to join with them in this small project.

It will give me a good look at some of Annapolis' finest young people and I know it will take me a long way on my search to understand my new home.

Annapolis 2.0

There is a concept of the Internet called 'Web 2.0,' which defines the fastest-growing aspect of online communications. It sounds technical but really is more a description of how people use the Internet.

It is summarized by the catch phrase "the read-write Web."

This refers to the phenomenon that more and more people are using the Internet not only to read stuff (like this blog), but also to self-publish. The Internet is quickly moving from being a "one-to-many" medium to being a "many-to-many" medium (to use the words of Dan Gilmor in We The Media) .

The amazing thing is that millions of people of all ages, races and inclinations are posting pictures, blogging, commenting, engaging in online discussions and forums, chat groups and much more. They are not only reading, they are writing (or publishing) up a storm!

We want to move more in that direction on HometownAnnapolis.com soon.

We will soon add commenting on our blogs, and add a lot more community blogs. (If you have interest, please write). We are also looking at adding other social-networking applications which will help local users connect with and publish to the larger community.

I spoke on the phone not too long ago with Brian White, of Edgewater. Brian had called for several reasons, one of which was to thank us (and especially reporter Pam Wood) for the "excellent coverage" of environmental issues in the newspaper. He was very complimentary of the coverage of Chesapeake Bay that The Capital has given.

We went on to talk about the Internet. I mentioned to him that since we introduced story commenting about 8 months ago, there has been a tremendous response by local people not only to comment on the stories we post but to use these as a jumping-off point to start vigorous discussion of local issues.

In response, Brian said something that really rang a bell for me. He said "yes, I use the service , and comment sometimes. It has helped me find my passion."

The answer stunned me. While I have long been an advocate of citizen media and people-publishing I have never considered this a way to help people 'find' their passion.

Express their passion? Sure! But find it? Wow - quite a concept.

The more I thought about this the better I feel about it. It is great to imagine Annapolis and Anne Arundel County full of passionate people. Especially the kind that express it publicly. It could transform a community.

For too long people have been content to just listen, or read, and be passive. For centuries people have had little choice. The media has traditionally been a one way conversation - 'one-to-many.'

Now people are entering the public conversation in large numbers. We in the traditional media have to move over on the stage and make room for a lot more people on it - and for a very passionate, many-sided conversation.


Our community is full of bright, earnest and caring people. There is a lot of passion. It is great to hear all of you speak.

USNA - United States Naval Academy

One of the reasons I was excited about moving to Annapolis was the Naval Academy. To a lot of people outside of Maryland, if you say the word "Annapolis" they think you are talking about the academy. It only occurs to some that the city is also the state capital - one of those smaller cities that are capital cities in states which have much larger cities in them.


I liked the idea of living near the naval academy. It didn't hurt that I had grown up with navy and marines in the family - all enlisted though. I even had some friends who went to the academy, but had fallen out of touch with them once they went. (As a youth I had even thought of going myself when I was 14 - with dreams of flying F-4's off of carrier decks and so forth - but life took me in other directions).

So the first time I walked out on the campus a few days after I got here it was an amazing feeling. History. Honor. Tradition. Water. More water. It really seemed like the Annapolis I had imagined.

It still does.

I think more than any other part of the city - the USNA still carries a huge mystique with me. But there are some personal experiences becoming entwined as well, which makes it much more human without taking away the sense of awe.

Two stories.

The first humorous, and warm; the second also warm and inspiring.

One day last spring my family and I were walking on the grounds with our families who were in from out-of-town. Our little 2 year old was walking there with us (the one in the picture on my shoulders) and he spied some ducks on the lawn of the Marine commandant's house. Not thinking too much about protocol, he ran up on the lawn chasing the ducks. The commandant's wife was on the screened-in porch and saw him. Very quickly the door opened and she came out, all smiles, with some bread in her hands. Bending down, she offered the little adventurer bread to to give to the ducks.

My son took one look at the bread, then at the ducks, and proceeded to eat the bread! We thanked the commandant's wife profusely and she seemed to really enjoy it - but as we walked away my wife was worried that she might have thought we never fed the little guy. I told my wife that I figured she just thought he would make a good Marine!

The second story is one that also warms me when I think of it.

I had had a particularly bad day at work one day and just needed to do a lot of walking and thinking. I headed to the city dock area and sat there, looking at the harbor and not getting much relief.

The new gate and visitor center had just been opened and I decided to go in and see how much walking I could do. I think better when I walk.

As I walked out along the water by the side of the city dock and then headed towards the main channel of the river, I stopped at various memorials along the waterline on spa creek (see a great map). At each one I thought about the fact that people gave their lives and fought hard to give me the ability to be as free with my life and opinions as I am. I thought a lot about the culture of honor and sacrifice being taught to young people there.

Sometimes in regular work-a-day America we forget how our very existence has at times been preserved by the steel strands of such a culture. That reminder tends to put things into perspective.

As I walked across the campus on the way back to my car, I was greeted by probably 20 midshipmen crossing paths with me. To a person, they smiled at me and most greeted me verbally. They were all very young. Most all seemed very optimistic and full of life.

I returned to my car and to my job feeling better than I had in some time.

This too is Annapolis.

The voices of Annapolis

It's a new year and lots of things are afoot. Many readers have probably already heard that Landmark Communications (our parent company) is investigating putting all its newspapers and other communications assets (including The Weather Channel) up for sale.

This certainly adds to the bumpiness of the newspaper business in the past 18 months, with our long-time publisher, Phil Merrill, passing away in June of 2006, The Capital ownership transferring to 100%-ownership by Landmark Communications in spring of 2007 and now uncertainty on the horizon again to start this year.

All that said, I don't feel any different about what we are doing. In fact, I feel even better. Newspapers like us are local phenomena. We are all about a town, a city, a region. The best ones put out a daily picture of a city and interact with a community in powerful, often intangible, ways. They may even do as much for a multitude of smaller communities.

No matter who the owners might be, that is what a company of people at a good local paper do and who they are. Some of us were talking after the latest news and concluded this - let's just keep being who we are. In fact, let's focus on that more than ever.

From my point of view as Internet Director, I also realize that 'who we are' is changing in a deeper way, and was before any of these other things happened. This deeper change is a good one. It has to do with making the paper's conversation with other people who live and work in this region more of a two-way dialogue.

As company and on the Internet team, we decided some time ago to give you, the users of this website, a much greater voice. We started doing that with the addition of commenting on all of our news stories, a feedback page for posting your comments about the site, and an open forum page. We are soon moving ahead to launching community-specific pages with stories from the paper on local communities, comments, calendar events, local meetings, and citizen comment areas all geo-targeted to smaller communities.

So, If you live Crofton, before long you will be able to find all that stuff that is applicable to Crofton on one page. In addition, we will be putting up sections for you to interact with your community even more fully in a style much somewhat like social networking sites have.

Newspapers around the world are changing from being news delivery organizations to becoming community information hubs.

In my opinion, one of the most important things we will have in the future is a much broader stage where a lot more voices can be heard. Especially your voice.

This is what I am talking about when I say I feel even better now. Perhaps it took a jolt to remind us of some of the basics. This trend of bringing in more voices is not going away. It is also 'who we are.' And without a doubt it is in the direction of 'who we will be.'

I say that not to put any agenda into possible future owners' considerations, but to state that I believe any newspaper which does not do this will cease to be a viable community voice before long.

People have tasted a new freedom of expression and they will have it. With the Internet, anyone can publish now, and find readers across the nation or across Main Street. A.J Liebling's trueism, "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one," has been overwritten by the digital age. As the printing press brought the ability to read and, some argue - thus, democracy - to millions, so the Internet has brought the ability to publish their own voice to millions as well.

Now, a citizen of Anne Arundel county or any other community does not have to wait to get published in newsprint to be heard. I still believe newsprint is a very powerful platform, and I encourage you to keep writing Tom Marquardt, our editor, and others in our organization. But there are also many other outlets for you to let your voice be heard on our web site and they will increase.

As I have mentioned to my readers on some other posts, I have been deeply moved by comments I have read on our site posted by people who live here. It has been heartwarming. These are the voices of regular people, not journalists or professional writers. They are often not written particularly well from an English teacher's perspective. But they have real human spirit in them.

As a newcomer to the Annapolis area, I started this blog as a personal search for connectedness for myself and my family, as well as a place to talk about Web sites. I am trying to be honest in this search, and sometimes it is painful, because life can be hard and it can be scary. It is also exciting and envigorating, especially when others who are neighbors also begin to show their humanity and their own fears, deams and frustrations.

That, to me, is what being a community is all about. I am hearing your voices as you participate. The commenting on our stories has grown and is getting fuller, richer and more diverse. I love it. It is also coming from communities all over the region, not just Annapolis proper.

It is helping me to find what I call Annapolis.

We won't stop doing this.

The Very Best Wishes

Though my family and I are not in Annapolis this Christmas holiday, we join together in wishing the very best and warmest holiday season to all of you in our new home on the Chesapeake!

Our thoughts are with you and we look forward to a fantastic new year together in 2008.

Alan Eason and family

Peace in Annapolis - Part II

I know - I know.

It has been a while since the last post.

While I do apologize, I have to admit I have been puzzling a lot over some things and it has clouded my search for Annapolis somewhat.

I promised you some posts on the Naval Academy, a letter from a reader and some other material and they will come, but let me address this issue first.

You may have noticed we have had some vigorous commenting by residents of Annapolis, Eastport and other parts of Anne Arundel County on a couple of stories having to do with residential security in certain neighborhoods (gunfire in Eastport) and who gets to go to what school and why (a basketball player leaves a rough life to go to Severna Park High) click links to go to the stories.

Read the stories - then read the comments.

Both stories have some common elements.

Guns.
Who lives in which neighborhoods.
Official responses.
A desire for security - a chance - hope.

The comments from people who read the stories also have some commonalities:

How to characterize a neighborhood (or school).
What you should or should not expect from the place you live - home.
Who gets what from the government.
A sense of protecting something we want to feel is safe.

There are some uncommonalities.

One story is about a young man trying to get a better life.
The other is about long-time residents trying to live safer lives.
One is about sports and a chance to restart life.
The other is about random (or stray) gunfire.
One has a hopeful upswing.
The other seems to have a fearful repetition of theme.

In my search for the real Annapolis, I cannot escape wrestling with things brought up in these stories and in the comments following them. Most everyone involved in the stories and the commenting live here. They are all part of that greater region I call "Annapolis."

If this is my home, and where my family is to live, how do I react? I have a 2 year old son. Do I want him in one school or the other? Do I have to fear for my family's lives if we live on one street and not another? How do I look at the legions of other parents who also love their children and want them in another school than the ones they are in?

What is 'safe?'
Why are bullets bouncing around in residential neighborhoods?

It shocks me.

My grandfather was a babe in a cradle and a bullet came in off the street and passed through the wood in the headboard inches above his head. He went on and lived 84 years, which is good because it helped get me here.

Difference is, that was Norwood Colorado. 1902 or thereabouts. Gold and silver mining town between Durango and Telluride. The Wild West. Gunfights in the streets. Wild miners on Saturday nights.

This is Annapolis.

I have to ask - is Annapolis the Wild West? Are we supposed to accept that as part of life here? True, a bullet is a bullet but somehow I expected something different in Annapolis.

After living here a while I see why people retreat to certain "neighborhoods" and send their kids to certain schools. The fear of violence in some parts of the county is truly palpable, at least to a newcomer from a much more secure part of the country.

But then what happens when another family also wants to retreat to a better school and a better neighborhood. Are we to allow some and not allow others? And why do people have to retreat at all? Can we not have an Annapolis where people do not have to hide and do not have to retreat?

I know I sound naive, but was it not Bobby Kennedy, paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw who said: "There are those that look at things the way they are, and ask why? I dream of things that never were, and ask why not? "

Cannot Annapolis, home of a national military academy which trains future world leaders and national protectors, come up with something better?

I wonder about these things.

In my last post I was very hopeful, having seen a spirit of this city which could help nudge weary countries half a globe away towards peace.

The last few weeks I have seen darker shadows, skirting around under our own historic dome, stealing peace away.

The search goes on.