Dayhoff Art: The first blogger in Howard County speaks

The first blogger in Howard County speaks.

I read Dave Wissing’s recent post in “The Hedgehog Report,” “HoCo: Whatever Happen To….” – on May 4, 2009, with great interest.

In it, he commented at some length about: “The Baltimore Sun had a good article yesterday on the growth of blogging in Howard County. A couple people emailed me asking why my website was not included and Wordbones even highlighted this on his website when mentioning the article. The truth of the matter is the reporter did contact me by email a few months ago.”

[…]

“With the previous profiles in mind and looking at the websites mentioned in this article, I did find it interesting how things have changed. The Baltimore Examiner probably had the most in-depth profile of the Howard County Blogging Community in April 2006. The article is no longer available on the Examiner website…”

The Examiner article: “Ranting & raving for the whole world to see” By Dan Gainer of The Examiner November 6th, 2006 is still online: http://tinyurl.com/ce5ckg (A reference to it may be found on my blog here: http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2006/11/20061106-ranting-and-raving-in-maryland.html)

“… (heck, The Baltimore Examiner doesn’t even exist in paper form anymore) and at the time, there were only four known blogs be written out of Howard County. I still hold some pride in that I was the first (starting in December 2002)…” Read Dave’s entire post here: HoCo: Whatever Happen To….

In spite of his gracious unassuming modesty, it would have been appropriate if the article had given him a mention...

Blogs did not just happen overnight. The phenomena took years of hard work.

In the beginning it was lonely and at times, extremely frustrating. (My faltering beginnings go back to 2004… and) his blog, “The Hedgehog Report” really influenced me. In my beginning years, Dave was always helpful, gracious, knowledgeable and ever willing to lend a hand.

He was out there when there were just a few of us and his blog was then, as it is now, influential, not to overlook, groundbreaking. See: "The Howard County Gang of Four" August 21, 2006

I appreciated the Baltimore Sun article, if not for the one reason that I can well remember when the traditional print newspapers wanted to ignore us and wished we would go away. (The Associated Press still will go to great lengths to not credit blogs…)

It was only three years ago that I published, “How is Internet media held accountable?” in The Tentacle on January 25, 2006 http://tinyurl.com/ckd9pw – the working title of the column was “What is a blog.”

Nonetheless, I continue to be disappointed with the lack of depth and history that goes into such articles. Too much of the media today has the attention span of a goldfish.

Thanks Dave, for all your hard work… and all your help over the years.

~Kevin Dayhoff http://www.kevindayhoff.net/

Related: http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2006/11/20061106-ranting-and-raving-in-maryland.html

http://www.examiner.com/a-381542~Ranting___raving_for_the_whole_world_to_see.html

“How is Internet media held accountable?” in The Tentacle on January 25, 2006 http://tinyurl.com/ckd9pw

Media Give credit where credit is due

http://kevindayhoff.blogspot.com/2006/04/20060404-give-credit-where-credit-is.html

"The Howard County Gang of Four" August 21, 2006