Montgomery Community Media

No one can replace the Gazette. With the sudden announcement that the Montgomery County’s newspaper of record will print its last edition this week, there has been an understandable amount of shock and loss. The skilled staff of nearly 70 individuals (greatly downsized over the years of nearly-constant cutbacks) is the biggest loss of all. […]

I was speaking recently with someone in-the-know about projections for voter turnout. She told me that Montgomery County may be heading for a record-low on November 4th… maybe as few as 12% of registered voters heading to the polls in this general election. That’s abysmal, especially for a county as well educated and connected as […]

This week’s hearing regarding public campaign financing brings to light the frustration many of us feel about growing voter apathy in Montgomery County. During the June primaries, Montgomery County had the lowest voter turnout of any county in the state… just over 16%. Sure, it was just a primary in an off-season election, and there […]

There’s an old saying that goes: ‘Don’t’ pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel’. Decades ago, that meant you didn’t cross swords with your local newspaper. Today, social media has replaced print as the way to generate power through large followings. The Washington Redskins organization had that large following, but saw […]

The announcement this week of the proposed takeover of DirecTV by AT&T reminded me of one of the great ‘increasing the size of the pie’ business lessons I once learned… not in a classroom, but in a high-rise overlooking LAX. When I worked at PBS, one of my main responsibilities was working with the direct […]

Have you ever watched a little kids’ soccer game? When they’re first starting out, the kids chase around the ball like some two legged school of fish. It’s hilarious to watch this mass of a dozen kids follow the ball across the field. My youngest son Alexander was very much like this when he first […]

So what makes OUR ‘Day in the Life’ so special? Unless you’ve been hiding out somewhere, you’ve probably heard that next Tuesday April 22nd marks the 2nd annual ‘A Day in the Life of Montgomery County’. It’s a 24-hour snapshot of the people & places that make Montgomery County Maryland so interesting. We’re encouraging every […]

There’s a radio station in Baltimore that doesn’t want their listeners to contact them. No phone calls, no requests, no nothing. In an age of social media connectivity of all kinds, that’s unheard of. Media companies and other consumer-facing organizations are dying to connect with you in every conceivable way: Like Us, Follow Us, Vulcan […]

On May 22, 1968, the nuclear submarine USS Scorpion disappeared without a trace somewhere in the North Atlantic. The U.S. Navy conducted an extensive search based on its last known whereabouts, but with no luck. With no options available, the U.S. government decided to take an unusual approach by ‘crowdsourcing’ the search for the submarine […]

This past weekend, I was driving around with my five-year-old son and we got to talking about a tune playing on the radio. Making conversation, I asked, “Alexander, what’s your favorite song?” I wasn’t sure a five-year-old would even have an answer, but after a few seconds he said “Radioactive” by Imagine Dragons (and no, […]