There is a pretty exciting Annapolis project waiting for me and I am anxious to start.

Friday I went by the Bates Center Annapolis Boys and Girls Club looking for a video project. Reginald Broddie, the Chief Professional Officer of the five Boys and Girls Clubs in Anne Arundel County, invited me into his office and we talked. It seems that he and Larry Huggins, a fine young communications professional with the clubs, had just been talking about video that same day. We decided to do a project together and put it on HometownAnnapolis.com.

Reginald talked about another project - one that we could cover - and it is exciting. Perhaps you have heard of it. It is a radio show called "Money Matters," which is produced by young people in the clubs and aired on WNAV at 8:30 on Sunday mornings. It teaches "critical thinking," Reginald says.

He made a believer out of me. I can't wait to watch them produce the show and film the process.

Long ago I became familiar with a favorite saying of Alex Haley. He used to quote it often in Tennessee, as he went around giving speeches and teaching at UT:

"Find the good and praise it."

Haley was a consummate journalist and to him this principle seemed the pinnacle of the craft of writing. In following that maxim he brought a lot of energy to people trying to do right.

Reginald and Larry have the same energy. It is exciting to join with them in this small project.

It will give me a good look at some of Annapolis' finest young people and I know it will take me a long way on my search to understand my new home.

There is a concept of the Internet called 'Web 2.0,' which defines the fastest-growing aspect of online communications. It sounds technical but really is more a description of how people use the Internet.

It is summarized by the catch phrase "the read-write Web."

This refers to the phenomenon that more and more people are using the Internet not only to read stuff (like this blog), but also to self-publish. The Internet is quickly moving from being a "one-to-many" medium to being a "many-to-many" medium (to use the words of Dan Gilmor in We The Media) .

The amazing thing is that millions of people of all ages, races and inclinations are posting pictures, blogging, commenting, engaging in online discussions and forums, chat groups and much more. They are not only reading, they are writing (or publishing) up a storm!

We want to move more in that direction on HometownAnnapolis.com soon.

We will soon add commenting on our blogs, and add a lot more community blogs. (If you have interest, please write). We are also looking at adding other social-networking applications which will help local users connect with and publish to the larger community.

I spoke on the phone not too long ago with Brian White, of Edgewater. Brian had called for several reasons, one of which was to thank us (and especially reporter Pam Wood) for the "excellent coverage" of environmental issues in the newspaper. He was very complimentary of the coverage of Chesapeake Bay that The Capital has given.

We went on to talk about the Internet. I mentioned to him that since we introduced story commenting about 8 months ago, there has been a tremendous response by local people not only to comment on the stories we post but to use these as a jumping-off point to start vigorous discussion of local issues.

In response, Brian said something that really rang a bell for me. He said "yes, I use the service , and comment sometimes. It has helped me find my passion."

The answer stunned me. While I have long been an advocate of citizen media and people-publishing I have never considered this a way to help people 'find' their passion.

Express their passion? Sure! But find it? Wow - quite a concept.

The more I thought about this the better I feel about it. It is great to imagine Annapolis and Anne Arundel County full of passionate people. Especially the kind that express it publicly. It could transform a community.

For too long people have been content to just listen, or read, and be passive. For centuries people have had little choice. The media has traditionally been a one way conversation - 'one-to-many.'

Now people are entering the public conversation in large numbers. We in the traditional media have to move over on the stage and make room for a lot more people on it - and for a very passionate, many-sided conversation.


Our community is full of bright, earnest and caring people. There is a lot of passion. It is great to hear all of you speak.

One of the reasons I was excited about moving to Annapolis was the Naval Academy. To a lot of people outside of Maryland, if you say the word "Annapolis" they think you are talking about the academy. It only occurs to some that the city is also the state capital - one of those smaller cities that are capital cities in states which have much larger cities in them.


I liked the idea of living near the naval academy. It didn't hurt that I had grown up with navy and marines in the family - all enlisted though. I even had some friends who went to the academy, but had fallen out of touch with them once they went. (As a youth I had even thought of going myself when I was 14 - with dreams of flying F-4's off of carrier decks and so forth - but life took me in other directions).

So the first time I walked out on the campus a few days after I got here it was an amazing feeling. History. Honor. Tradition. Water. More water. It really seemed like the Annapolis I had imagined.

It still does.

I think more than any other part of the city - the USNA still carries a huge mystique with me. But there are some personal experiences becoming entwined as well, which makes it much more human without taking away the sense of awe.

Two stories.

The first humorous, and warm; the second also warm and inspiring.

One day last spring my family and I were walking on the grounds with our families who were in from out-of-town. Our little 2 year old was walking there with us (the one in the picture on my shoulders) and he spied some ducks on the lawn of the Marine commandant's house. Not thinking too much about protocol, he ran up on the lawn chasing the ducks. The commandant's wife was on the screened-in porch and saw him. Very quickly the door opened and she came out, all smiles, with some bread in her hands. Bending down, she offered the little adventurer bread to to give to the ducks.

My son took one look at the bread, then at the ducks, and proceeded to eat the bread! We thanked the commandant's wife profusely and she seemed to really enjoy it - but as we walked away my wife was worried that she might have thought we never fed the little guy. I told my wife that I figured she just thought he would make a good Marine!

The second story is one that also warms me when I think of it.

I had had a particularly bad day at work one day and just needed to do a lot of walking and thinking. I headed to the city dock area and sat there, looking at the harbor and not getting much relief.

The new gate and visitor center had just been opened and I decided to go in and see how much walking I could do. I think better when I walk.

As I walked out along the water by the side of the city dock and then headed towards the main channel of the river, I stopped at various memorials along the waterline on spa creek (see a great map). At each one I thought about the fact that people gave their lives and fought hard to give me the ability to be as free with my life and opinions as I am. I thought a lot about the culture of honor and sacrifice being taught to young people there.

Sometimes in regular work-a-day America we forget how our very existence has at times been preserved by the steel strands of such a culture. That reminder tends to put things into perspective.

As I walked across the campus on the way back to my car, I was greeted by probably 20 midshipmen crossing paths with me. To a person, they smiled at me and most greeted me verbally. They were all very young. Most all seemed very optimistic and full of life.

I returned to my car and to my job feeling better than I had in some time.

This too is Annapolis.

It's a new year and lots of things are afoot. Many readers have probably already heard that Landmark Communications (our parent company) is investigating putting all its newspapers and other communications assets (including The Weather Channel) up for sale.

This certainly adds to the bumpiness of the newspaper business in the past 18 months, with our long-time publisher, Phil Merrill, passing away in June of 2006, The Capital ownership transferring to 100%-ownership by Landmark Communications in spring of 2007 and now uncertainty on the horizon again to start this year.

All that said, I don't feel any different about what we are doing. In fact, I feel even better. Newspapers like us are local phenomena. We are all about a town, a city, a region. The best ones put out a daily picture of a city and interact with a community in powerful, often intangible, ways. They may even do as much for a multitude of smaller communities.

No matter who the owners might be, that is what a company of people at a good local paper do and who they are. Some of us were talking after the latest news and concluded this - let's just keep being who we are. In fact, let's focus on that more than ever.

From my point of view as Internet Director, I also realize that 'who we are' is changing in a deeper way, and was before any of these other things happened. This deeper change is a good one. It has to do with making the paper's conversation with other people who live and work in this region more of a two-way dialogue.

As company and on the Internet team, we decided some time ago to give you, the users of this website, a much greater voice. We started doing that with the addition of commenting on all of our news stories, a feedback page for posting your comments about the site, and an open forum page. We are soon moving ahead to launching community-specific pages with stories from the paper on local communities, comments, calendar events, local meetings, and citizen comment areas all geo-targeted to smaller communities.

Though my family and I are not in Annapolis this Christmas holiday, we join together in wishing the very best and warmest holiday season to all of you in our new home on the Chesapeake!

Our thoughts are with you and we look forward to a fantastic new year together in 2008.

Alan Eason and family