MarylandReporter.com gets Mobbies award — Best Politics Blog
A hot dog with a surprised look opens his mail box and reads the postcard inside: “You may already be a wiener.” Here’s a link to this cartoon that still makes me laugh after all these years, and I wish I could show it to you, but it’s still copyrighted.
That’s sort of how I felt last night when a Facebook colleague posted the results of the Baltimore Sun’s Fifth Annual Mobbies award. MarylandReporter.com won as the Best Politics Blog and we came in fourth as the Best News Blog.
Maryland Juice came in third, and Red Maryland came in sixth; we often link to some of their content in roundup. Thanks to Tom Coale for posting the results. His HoCoRising came in fifth.
I missed the award ceremony Tuesday night. If the Sun had let me know, I might have shown up, but instead I spent three hours at an Anne Arundel County delegation hearing in Annapolis.
Based on a photo gallery of the Mobbies event and a video of the awards “ceremony,” winners got a cheesy white plastic hat with a Mobbies logo on it. And many contestants got to pose in front of a Baltimore Sun logo.
What does this contest mean? Hard to say. As I pointed out when I asked readers to vote this year, the Mobbies lack transparency and accountability. They allow people to vote 10 days in a row, and don’t tell you the raw votes, only the order of finish. Did we win by 20 votes or 200? Was competition close? How many votes did the politics or news blogs get compared to the sports blogs or the best personal blog, Sex in Baltimore, which won again despite posting only 20 blog entries this year?
Sex beats politics any day. Sex AND politics is winning combination but all we’ve got to offer are stories like Lynette’s Law, legislation to punish sex abuse by therapists.
And Baltimore Brew, which won as Best News Blog, does have a lot of good original reporting. So the voting does means something.
Thanks for voting for MarylandReporter.com.
–Len Lazarick, Editor & Publisher
MarylandReporter.com is a daily news website produced by journalists committed to making state government as open, transparent, accountable and responsive as possible – in deed, not just in promise. We believe the people who pay for this government are entitled to have their money spent in an efficient and effective way, and that they are entitled to keep as much of their hard-earned dollars as they possibly can.