MENU

Sections

  • Home
  • About
    • The Chestertown Spy
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising & Underwriting
      • Advertising Terms & Conditions
    • Editors & Writers
    • Dedication & Acknowledgements
    • Code of Ethics
    • Chestertown Spy Terms of Service
    • Technical FAQ
    • Privacy
  • The Arts and Design
  • Local Life and Culture
  • Public Affairs
    • Ecosystem
    • Education
    • Health
  • Community Opinion
  • Donate to the Chestertown Spy
  • Free Subscription
  • Talbot Spy
  • Cambridge Spy

More

  • Support the Spy
  • About Spy Community Media
  • Advertising with the Spy
  • Subscribe
June 5, 2023

Chestertown Spy

Nonpartisan and Education-based News for Chestertown

  • Home
  • About
    • The Chestertown Spy
    • Contact Us
    • Advertising & Underwriting
      • Advertising Terms & Conditions
    • Editors & Writers
    • Dedication & Acknowledgements
    • Code of Ethics
    • Chestertown Spy Terms of Service
    • Technical FAQ
    • Privacy
  • The Arts and Design
  • Local Life and Culture
  • Public Affairs
    • Ecosystem
    • Education
    • Health
  • Community Opinion
  • Donate to the Chestertown Spy
  • Free Subscription
  • Talbot Spy
  • Cambridge Spy
Point of View Letters to Editor

Publisher’s Note: Using a Fake Name Damages the Spy and the Community

July 7, 2022 by The Chestertown Spy

Share

A few days ago, the Chestertown Spy published a letter to the editor regarding a recent League of Women Voters election forum with School Board candidates. And like every letter of this kind the Spy receives, a honor system kicks in where the Spy staff, lacking the resources to investigate the identity of each author, must rely on the good faith of the writer to identify themselves correctly.

For almost fourteen years, that system has worked well. Like the community itself, our writers have been honest and forthright about who they are and where they live in their correspondence. That has provided genuine creditability to the writer’s point of view and fulfills the Chestertown Spy’s mission to provide a safe and honest forum for the exchange of ideas.

Sadly, that trust was violated when the Spy published a letter signed by a “Bob Crandall” of Worton, Maryland.

Yesterday, the Spy suspended the comments section related to this letter to give the author 24 hours to confirm their identity. Having failed to respond to our request, we have no choice but to remove that letter and the 14 reader comments it generated.

We apologize to our readers for publishing this letter. It is profoundly regrettable that someone in this small county would intentionally mislead their community and damage our newspaper’s creditability.

This incident will require the Spy to initiate new policies on vetting letters to the editor and comments. While it can be said that this is a “sign of the times” shift in policy, it reminds this publisher that even in a small community such as ours, we can not escape the harmful dishonesty that is now part of American politics.

Dave Wheelan
Publisher and Executive Editor

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Letters to Editor

Correction: Mid-Shore Episcopal Churches WILL have Services this Month

March 12, 2022 by The Chestertown Spy

Share

Yesterday, the Chestertown Spy published a letter to the editor from the pastor of the St. Clement’s Episcopal Church informing the community that in-person church worship to be suspended in the Episcopal Diocese of Easton for Sunday, March 15 and Sunday, March 22. That letter, which we received this week, was actually originally sent in the Fall of 2020. We are investigating why the correspondence was re-sent two years after the fact, but we regret the error. We have also removed the letter from our website.

All Episcopal Diocese of Easton churches will be conducting their regular services.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: News Homepage, News Portal Highlights

Happy New Year from the Spies of Chestertown

January 1, 2022 by The Chestertown Spy

Share

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Spy Top Story

Merry Christmas from the Spies of Chestertown

December 25, 2021 by The Chestertown Spy

Share

Merry Christmas to you and yours from all the Spies of Chestertown.

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Spy Top Story

Editor’s Notes: Protecting Local History from Rachel Maddow, COVID Redux, and Spy Thanks

August 9, 2021 by The Chestertown Spy

Share

Over the last few years, there has been a considerable effort to “preserve” local history and use it strategically in such debates as the location of the Talbot Boys Confederate memorial in Easton. But in today’s edition, Spy contributors Neil King, Jr. and Jeff McGuiness have sought to actually “protect” local history from being abused on a national scale.

Neil and Jeff, whose last contribution earlier this year, Statues and Fields, became one of our most widely-read stories in 2021, have returned with a tough but responsible response to MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow’s recent false narrative of Frederick Douglass and his time living as a slave at Talbot County’s Mt. Misery estate.

The cable news star had used Douglass as part of a “good riddance” essay on the recently-deceased former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who had owned the historic home while serving in Washington during the Bush years. Part of Maddow’s narrative was that the former cabinet member was, in some psychologically deranged way, perfectly A-OK in owning the property where Douglass had suffered his worst beatings, which Rachel suggested was consistent with Rumsfeld’s unforgivable use of torture with Iraqi war prisoners.  

Spoiler alert: Rachel Maddow was dead wrong about Mt. Misery. Please read their brilliant essay here. 

As many had feared, the Delta variant has found its way onto the Mid-Shore along with its deadly infection rate and increased pressure on our relatively small healthcare network. To our chagrin and complete frustration, the Spy has had to return to reporting local COVID cases. While conditions still don’t warrant daily updates, we will be analyzing those numbers every 24 hours to determine if any significant changes require public notice. I want to thank again Spy public affairs editor John Griep for his ongoing coverage of this health crisis. 

Finally, I’d like to thank the hundred or so Spy readers who contributed to our summer fundraising effort. These small donations are now the lifeblood in keeping the Spy spying on the communities we love. Speaking for our writers and volunteers, I am profoundly grateful for these gifts and their use to keep the Chestertown Spy free for all our readers. For those who still would like to contribute please feel free to do so here.

Dave Wheelan
Publisher and Executive Editor

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Spy Highlights

Chestertown Spy Survey Results – Impeachment

January 13, 2021 by The Chestertown Spy

Share
We asked yesterday how Spy readers felt about the second impeachment of President Trump. And, if impeachment does occur, we asked if President Trump should be banned from seeking the Presidency a second time.
Readers were pretty clear…
Strongly FAVOR impeachment  —  84%
Strongly OPPOSE impeachment — 11%
President Trump SHOULD NOT be allowed to seek the presidency again — 86%
President Trump SHOULD be allowed to seek the presidency again — 3%

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Brevities

The Chestertown Spy Survey #34: Impeachment for Donald Trump?

January 12, 2021 by The Chestertown Spy

Share

With the United States House of Representatives planning to vote on sending an article of impeachment to the Senate on  Wednesday, we thought it would be a good time to ask our Chestertown Spy readers what they thought.

Please take the Talbot Spy Survey here

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Brevities

Spy Moments: Chestertown Ready for the Holidays

December 24, 2020 by The Chestertown Spy

Share

If joy is a whim in the air, as the poet Robinson Jeffers wrote, The Chestertown Spy wishes abiding whims upon our readers, our friends, and our Community this holiday season.

Despite a tempestuous year fraught with almost insurmountable challenges, our hope is that we recognize that the greatest gifts are given each day in our mutual effort to make our community shine even brighter.

With thanks to you all, we offer this collage of greetings.

 

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Brevities

Publisher’s Notes: Gratitude, the Spy’s Jim Dissette, COVID’s John Griep, and Cambridge

November 16, 2020 by The Chestertown Spy

Share

As the Chestertown Spy enters the last few months of 2020, our collective annus horribilis, we owe a special thank you to our readers and sponsors for their kind support during what may have been the most difficult year of its existence. Like all enterprises, large or small, the COVID-19 crisis presented unique challenges to our mission. It was only due to our loyal subscribers that we have weathered this dangerous storm. We cannot express enough our gratitude. 

Jim Dissette
Editor, Chestertown Spy

I also want to give a special shoutout to Jim Dissette’s leadership as editor of the Chestertown Spy. With Jim’s return in this role, the Spy has maintained its kinder and gentler approach to the community’s public affairs while also continuing as both advocate and practitioner of the arts (he’s a poet) and our regional culture. Both the Spy and Chestertown is lucky to have him during such difficult times. Our readers can show their appreciation by supporting our fall appeal so that we can continue to fund this important role here. 

I would also be remiss if I didn’t also acknowledge the Spy’s public affairs editor John Greip’s tireless work in documenting the coronavirus pandemic in Chestertown and the entire Mid-Shore since March of this year. His reports have been some of the most read articles in the Spy’s history and a sober reminder that we have miles to go with this horrific disease before returning to “normal.”

The Spy is also celebrating the official launch of the Cambridge Spy today. It will be our third online publication for the Mid-Shore and the first to have a formal partnership with WHCP Community Radio. We have had a supportive relationship with WHCP ever since former NPR executive Mike Starling founded the nonprofit in 2015. This fall, we agreed to work collaboratively on original content for both radio and the internet, which we hope will be a successful model for our other Spy newspapers down the road. 

As the Spy continues to grow incrementally into other communities, I’d like to end with my own heartfelt gratitude to the people of Chestertown as we enter into our twelfth year of existence. Without the town’s early support of the Chestertown Spy and its very inexperienced publisher in 2009, this local news experiment would have simply failed. It is just another example of the generous nature of this remarkable place along the Chester River but also one that has given birth to a template that will serve the entire region for many years to come. 

Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours. 

Dave Wheelan
Publisher and Executive Editor

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Spy Highlights

The Chestertown Spy Survey #33 – The Transition

November 5, 2020 by The Chestertown Spy

Share
We were curious last Sunday about what readers of the The Spy were thinking about the Presidential transition. Today, we’re hoping we actually get to a transition one way or another sooner rather than later.
However, what was clear from the responses is that there are two important tasks whether President Trump is re-elected or his challenger Joe Biden is elected. More than anything else we posed, readers want to see strong people selected for top positions in the administration. And, readers want to see new initiatives to deal with the very persistent COVID-19 virus.
Let’s hope in the weeks and months ahead, we see both!

The Spy Newspapers may periodically employ the assistance of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the clarity and accuracy of our content.

Filed Under: Brevities

Next Page »

Copyright © 2023

Affiliated News

  • The Cambridge Spy
  • The Talbot Spy

Sections

  • Arts
  • Culture
  • Ecosystem
  • Education
  • Health
  • Local Life and Culture
  • Spy Senior Nation

Spy Community Media

  • About
  • Subscribe
  • Contact Us
  • Advertising & Underwriting

Copyright © 2023 · Spy Community Media Child Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in