Public Affairs

The Maryland Wing of the Civil Air Patrol recently held its annual Public Affairs Officer Conference, with CAP youth members attending from around the state. Quentin Banks, chief information officer of the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, presented a workshop on "Working with the Media During Emergencies." Second Lt. Sudha Kaistha of the Mount Airy Composite Squadron attended the all-day conference held in Catonsville.

T'Jae Gibson, of Abingdon, won first place in the Community Relations-Special Events category at the major command level in a U.S. Army public affairs competition. She leads the Army Research Laboratory's broadcast services area. She also serves as the public affairs office's designate for public affairs planning and project integration. A panel of eight civilian sector and government public affairs practitioners from around the country judged the competition. As a result of winning at the Army Materiel Command level, the program will compete at the Pentagon to be named a 2012 Maj. Gen. Keith L. Ware Public Affairs award winner, a pinnacle achievement for Army public affairs practitioners.

William Hamilton Danneberg Jr., a retired public affairs official and sailing enthusiast, died in his sleep Saturday at his Rock Hall home. He was 65. Mr. Danneberg was born in Baltimore and raised in Palmerton, Pa., where he graduated from high school in 1958. After earning a bachelor's degree from Bucknell University in 1962, he went to work as a reporter for The Morning Call in Allentown, Pa. From 1967 to 1968, he was director of information and publications for the Pennsylvania Department of Internal Affairs.

Edward V.C. Nicol, a retired Social Security Administration public affairs representative who earned the name of "Mr. Meals on Wheels" for his more than three decades of volunteer work, died Jan. 13 of pneumonia at the Presbyterian Home of Maryland in Towson. The longtime Rodgers Forge resident was 96. The son of Presbyterian missionaries, Edward Van Cleve Nicol was born in Minneapolis while his parents were on furlough from their mission work in Beirut. In 1918, Mr. Nicol and his family returned to Beirut, where he graduated from the American Community School in 1934.

With the end of the General Assembly's 90-day session, MPT's "State Circle" brings down the curtain on its year with a special broadcast at 7:30 tonight on Channels 22 and 67."State Circle" is a model of quality, locally produced public affairs programming. For those not familiar with the show, which airs each Friday when the legislature is in session, it offers the kind of coverage of state politics that big-city, network affiliates are supposed to provide but rarely do. It's aggressive, thoughtful and fairly comprehensive.

At 67, TV newsman Richard Sher is still irrepressible. And it is all but impossible not to get caught up in his enthusiasm. The 49-year broadcast veteran came to an interview last week to talk about his reinvention of a one-time Baltimore TV landmark, the long-running public affairs show "Square Off," and he was going to hit a talking point that he wanted to emphasize - over and over, so help him God. Near the end of the conversation, after he had...

No one knows how many people are watching, but Howard County's government cable television station is revamping its look -- with the help of a $9.50 steel clamp and a prop scavenged from an empty building.Starting with a new, 15-minute public affairs show called "Inside Howard County," which began Oct. 1, station manager Tara L. Gary and county information director Victoria Goodman are trying to update graphics and produce a line of new public affairs shows on GTV."My emphasis is on educating the public about what government does for them," Goodman said, adding: "We don't always do a good job communicating."

Kweisi Mfume returned to Television Hill last night to tape one last edition of The Bottom Line, the WBAL-TV public affairs show that he has headlined for nine years. Executives with WBAL's corporate owner, Hearst-Argyle, were joined by talk-show host Iyanla Vanzant and others last night to toast Mfume. Over the years, his topics have ranged from presidential politics to televised wrestling, and attracted political figures, actors, comics and activists. The show's cancellation resulted from its seeming promise.

EVEN THOUGH IT is located in Washington, many Baltimoreans tune into WDCU-FM at 90.1 for its superior jazz programming. Treasure every note, though. In a few months that station will go off the air. It will then reappear as an outlet for C-SPAN, which up to now has been known solely as a cable television operation that is devoted to broadcasting congressional hearings and other public affairs programs.Things could have turned out far worse. After the financially strapped University of the District of Columbia decided to sell WDCU, a commercial Christian broadcaster emerged as a likely buyer.

Richard Sher's "Square Off," Baltimore's longest-running public affairs, moves to 11 a.m. Sunday on WMAR-TV's schedule. "We're excited about making the move," says Sher, "because we will no longer be competing with shows like 'Meet the Press' or 'Sunday Morning.' By 11 a.m. those shows are gone, and it's clear sailing for us -- and our audience focused on issues that matter locally. "      

Police commissioners have come and gone in Baltimore over the past decade - five, to be precise - but there's been one consistent face of the Police Department over the past 10 years: spokespeople Donny Moses and Nicole Monroe. On Friday, Moses and Monroe will serve their last day in the public affairs office, opting to return to street work. Moses, a longtime drug cop, will move to the warrant task force, while Monroe, a former shooting detective, will begin doing work with witnesses.

Erna Segal, a writer and former Maryland Shock Trauma Center public affairs specialist who chronicled the lives and work of the center's medical staff, died Tuesday of complications from dementia at Largo Medical Center in Largo, Fla. The longtime Pikesville and Randallstown resident was 83. The daughter of furniture store owners, Erna Selznick was born and raised in Staten Island, N.Y., where she graduated in 1947 from Curtis High School....

Richard Sher's "Square Off," Baltimore's longest-running public affairs, moves to 11 a.m. Sunday on WMAR-TV's schedule. "We're excited about making the move," says Sher, "because we will no longer be competing with shows like 'Meet the Press' or 'Sunday Morning.' By 11 a.m. those shows are gone, and it's clear sailing for us -- and our audience focused on issues that matter locally. "      

By mid-January, Baltimore County Councilman Kenneth N. Oliver was getting anywhere from 25 to 50 e-mails a day urging him to support more speed cameras in school zones. The e-mails were mostly form letters from a website called Slow Down for Baltimore County Schools, the online home of a grass-roots group that originated on Facebook. The group's website was established by a public relations company with ties to the county's speed camera vendor, Affiliated Computer Services. Oliver said his mind was already made up. "I was in favor of speed cameras anyway for safety reasons, not for revenue generating," said Oliver, whose district is home to the camera that produced the most tickets.

At 67, TV newsman Richard Sher is still irrepressible. And it is all but impossible not to get caught up in his enthusiasm. The 49-year broadcast veteran came to an interview last week to talk about his reinvention of a one-time Baltimore TV landmark, the long-running public affairs show "Square Off," and he was going to hit a talking point that he wanted to emphasize - over and over, so help him God. Near the end of the conversation, after he had...

Angela Lee Mitchell, a senior public affairs specialist for State Farm Insurance Co. and a community activist, died Sunday of a heart attack while working in her Woodlawn office. She was 57. Angela Lee Moore was born in Baltimore, the youngest of five children. She was raised on Poplar Grove Street and graduated in 1969 from Douglass High School. "She came from a very humble background," said her husband of 30 years, Michael Bowen Mitchell, a former Baltimore City Council member and state senator.

The Johns Hopkins University announced yesterday that it has hired a former vice president of Enron Corp. to head its government relations and public affairs office. Linda L. Robertson, 47, will start at Hopkins on Sept. 3. She will be responsible for enhancing the ties among the university and the city, state and federal governments. She will also work with Johns Hopkins Medicine and the communities it serves. Essentially she will act as Hopkins' chief lobbyist. Robertson, an Oklahoma native, is well connected in Washington, having served almost eight years as a senior official at the U.S. Treasury Department.

After 83 years of gracefully applauding as someone else sashays to the familiar tune of "There She Is...," Miss Maryland is ready to bring home the crown from Atlantic City. "The Miss America Organization wants someone who is beautiful, talented and intelligent. Well, I'm already all of those things," says the newly crowned Miss Maryland 2003, Marina Harrison. At 22, this University of Maryland graduate and Severn resident is accomplished and articulate enough to back up her confident claims.

A series of explosions at the Army's Aberdeen Proving Ground yesterday rattled dishes and startled residents from Perry Hall to Middletown, Del., 30 miles away. "The entire house shook," said Joseph MulQueen, who called The Sun from his home in Perry Hall to report what he thought was an earthquake. A check of area seismographs revealed no tremors. But officials at Aberdeen acknowledged that a series of afternoon blasts in the facility's Edgewood area did trigger about 30 phone calls.

Karen Hughes has been unfairly criticized. Yes, she is the most senior official in the Bush administration responsible for working to improve America's image around the world - and that image is in trouble, as polls abroad show. It is therefore not surprising that many people have blamed Ms. Hughes, the undersecretary for public diplomacy and public affairs at the State Department since 2005, for failing to correct this problem. But that judgment ignores several important facts. First, the undersecretary of state does not control the half of the traditional public diplomacy budget that goes for broadcasting (it is under an independent board)