NEWS
August 19, 2014
The headline on the news release out of Maryland's Department of Labor, Licensing and Regulation yesterday sounded pretty great: "Private Sector Gains 18,700 Jobs Over-the-Year. " Read the body of the release, though, and you'll discover the actual news was not so great. In July, it says, Maryland actually lost 9,000 jobs, one of the worst performances in the nation and a distinct outlier in a month when 36 states and Washington, D.C., gained jobs. Not that the agency was dwelling on that.
NEWS
May 8, 2014
As is inevitable in an election debate, the Democratic candidates for Maryland governor stated as facts some things that, to put it kindly, could use a bit more context. We'll parse three of them for you. Brown on the health exchange After being blamed by Attorney General Douglas F. Gansler for the failure of Maryland's health insurance exchange website, Lt. Gov. Anthony G. Brown accepted that he, along with everyone else associated with it, was responsible. He went on to say, "Nobody was more frustrated than me, and that's why I took the action I did. I reorganized the leadership at the exchange; the executive director left.
ENTERTAINMENT
By David Zurawik and The Baltimore Sun | February 22, 2014
Unfortunately your browser does not support IFrames. Five years ago, I knew exactly how I felt about the tabloid website TMZ. It sometimes paid for news, and that put it outside the realm of trustworthy journalism. End of story. But last week, with TMZ posting video of Ravens running back Ray Rice dragging his apparently unconscious fiancee off an elevator at the Revel Casino in Atlantic City, I realized my attitude has been changing. Or maybe, as President Barack Obama says of his view on same-sex marriage, I should say it's evolved.
SPORTS
By Mike Klingaman, The Baltimore Sun | December 5, 2013
Chuck Foreman, meet Earl "The Pearl" Monroe. That's the how-de-do that Foreman, a former NFL star running back, wants to hear. "It would be a joy to run into Earl some day," he said. Foreman, who's from Frederick, played seven years with the Minnesota Vikings and led them to three Super Bowl appearances in the 1970s with mercurial moves that he borrowed from Monroe, a basketball Hall of Famer. "I grew up watching him play for the [Baltimore] Bullets," said Foreman, 63. "The Pearl could spin down the court, and the energy he brought to the game was unbelievable.
NEWS
November 7, 2013
When a large company has to deal with events that might cast it in a negative light - outsourcing of jobs, embezzlement or bankruptcy to name a few - it's not uncommon for a public relations campaign to be mounted to minimize the damage to its image. Nor is it unusual for such "crisis" communications to extend to the Internet and for messages to be posted on talk boards, comment sections or blogs to help shape the public's view. And yet it's difficult not to feel a twinge of disappointment at the news that the University of Maryland was engaged in just such an effort to minimize the public hostility that school officials knew would accompany their decision one year ago to join the Big Ten Conference.
NEWS
By Frederick N. Rasmussen, The Baltimore Sun | October 24, 2013
Since we're on the cusp of Halloween, better beware of the possible return of the dreaded snallygaster, which has periodically been scaring the dickens out of Marylanders since the mid-1700s. The what? The snallygaster is a half-bird, half-reptile creature that swoops down from the clouds searching for its prey of small game, farm animals, inattentive pets and even young children. I turned to Ed Okonowicz, the Elkton author who has written more than 20 books chronicling the ghosts, monsters, apparitions and other weird goings-on that have raised the hair on the backs of the necks of Marylanders and Delawareans since Colonial times.