Getting some R-E-S-P-E-C-T...

Howard County Blog sent me the link to this story in the Business Monthly.

Internet blogging has grown as a phenomenon in almost every field, particularly politics, and so it should come as no surprise that there are several active blogs on Howard County politics and government.

Until I ran across them recently, I had thought about having my own blog connected to bizmonthly.com, but had pretty much rejected the idea. Too much time, too much trouble. Despite my deep and long interest in politics, I'm just not enough of political junkie to write about it every day or even every couple of days, especially since I would wind up using some of my best observations on the blog long before they had a chance of making it into the newspaper. For the moment and foreseeable future, the physical newspaper is the main product and produces all the revenues. Reading these blogs, which are actually fairly good, only confirmed the reasons I had abandoned the idea. These guys (I think all but one are males) are just obsessed with Howard County.

Obsessed? I wouldn't go so far as to say I'm "obsessed" with Howard County, although when I asked Abbzug, she confirmed that I am in fact "obsessed." It's a problem I'm working on. Back to the ego-building...

They are particularly good at following, in excruciating detail, what's going in the plans for downtown Columbia, an area where The Business Monthly staff has neither the manpower or time to stay on top of every twist and turn. They've also been following the discussions about what will happen to Doughregan Manor, the ancestral estate of Charles Carroll, the only Catholic and longest surviving signer of the Declaration of Independence. He once owned 16,000 acres and had a huge hand in the history of Howard County and the country.

Here's a brief rundown of the current bloggers. One beef I have about many blogs is their anonymity, especially when it comes to making critical or even scurrilous remarks about other people, but I haven't found that to be the case so far with the Howard County blogs, even the no-name sites.

Hey, what's wrong with anonymity? In a sense, aren't we all anonymous -- another non-distinct face on the street, another nameless driver piloting 2ooo pounds of glass and steel, another body ensconced in a plywood fortress?

Sorry, sometimes I can't help it. As much as I'd like the fame and fortune that come with being a local blogger, I think I'll stick with the editorial freedom that anonymity provides. If I start to become overly critical or make scurrilous remarks, feel free to reprimand me accordingly in the comments section.

By the way, thanks to writer Len Lazarick for mentioning the burgeoning Howard County blogosphere.