In what can only be described as the sort of whimsical coincidence for which we have an unnatural affinity, shortly after we swung the hammer down on our latest post, we decided, against our better judgment, to see what was happening at Brunswick’s own local print ‘news’ outlet.
For years, we’ve affectionately referred to that paper as The Ostrich, or more obscurely as the NOTWIUN (Newspaper of the Willfully Uninformed) after they labeled two town councilors thusly because they were rightly skeptical of the Oxford Aviation proposal to occupy the crown jewel at the former BNAS. We did our best to humanize The Ostrich with this visual:
If you’re up for a little of our trademark piercing analysis cum sarcasm cum humor, you can review this episode in blogging history here and here.
So guess what we stumbled upon today? We found this item. It looks like for once, The Ostrich has pulled its head out of the sand.
Note that the item is dated September 3rd, which is Tuesday of next week. So you might say that The Ostrich has its head out of the hole, but there’s no questioning that it is leading from no better than third place, a full four days behind The Forecaster’s reporting, which was dated a full eleven days after Other Side’s exclusive on the story.
We say that with all due humility. In its favor, however, The Ostrich, in contrast to The Forecaster, at least mentioned Other Side, though they carefully avoided giving us credit for breaking the news:
One critic is resident and general contrarian Pembroke C. Schaeffer, who maintains the Internet blog, www.theothersideofbrunswick.com. A regular at town meetings, Schaeffer lambasted the taxi deal on his blog and posted details of the promissory note.
While we take exception to use of the term ‘lambasted,’ we are pleased that we’ve been promoted to the rank of “general contrarian” in the army of government watchdogs. Which means we outrank them by about 7 notches or so, and that we are of ‘flag rank.’
(Note: we don’t mean to be picky in such matters, but we don’t ‘maintain’ the blog; we own it and write and publish the content.)
We’re not entirely sure, but we think the word contrarian means “one who pays their property taxes on time, charges nothing for his publication, and allows unlimited free access to the companion web site.”
No matter, we can already imagine the award The Ostrich will get for the ‘Best Reporting on Taxi Company Forgivable Loans By Monday-Friday Papers in New England Towns Beginning with the Letters BRUN.”
We’ll console ourselves with the knowledge that while we may begin each day with sand in our eyes, it’s because the sandman flew over our cuckoo’s nest.
Not because we had our head planted firmly in the sand. In this business, you’ve got to take your laurels where you find them.
And know this: we won’t rest on them. We know from experience that sitting on laurels can hurt.
(Note: if the link to The Ostrich story doesn’t work for you, contact us directly. We’ve got it archived.)
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