To Mobbie or not to Mobbie — that is the question
It’s time for the fifth annual Mobbies award contest for bloggers run by the Baltimore Sun, and I’ve been hemming and hawing about whether to encourage our readers to vote.
I’ve already frittered away three days since voting started Monday, and you can vote once a day till next Thursday.
In addition to that vote early and often feature, I don’t like the contest because they don’t post the actual votes that the blogs get. That’s a not very transparent way for people in the news business to operate. But then again the Mobbies are really more about marketing and promotion — driving traffic to the Sun website, harvesting email addresses and the like.
It’s not like it’s run by the news department.
A couple of years ago I got real excited about the awards, promoted them and even went to the big announcement party. But we didn’t win, and a lot of strange blogs did.
So last year I paid no attention to the Mobbies at all. Even though the Sun is not posting votes, it is posting order of finish within categories. To my great surprise, I just discovered MarylandReporter.com came in third out of 14 in political blogs and fourth out of 11 in news blog. Not too shabby for zero effort. Somebody out there loves us.
So what the heck, let’s give it a go, and vote for MarylandReporter.com with the button to the right. Maybe some good will come of it.
That would be a great campaign slogan, wouldn’t it? “Vote for me. Maybe some good will come of it.” Candidates should try that out next time you’re door knocking.
Maybe it’s for the best that I don’t know that Sex in Baltimore or The Attic Girl got thousands of more votes that a news website about Maryland government and politics. What is not sexy about Martin O’Malley, Peter Franchot and outrageous audits?
Is it really possible that Baltimore Slumlord Watch, the best community blog in last year’s Mobbies, is more engaging than stories about state pensions?
Say it ain’t so and vote for MarylandReporter.com.
–-Len Lazarick
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.