Bryan Sears does a little News Analysis for the Daily Record online:
"There’s apparently a new Annapolis group so secret that obtaining the list of members is said to be protected by law [and] it’s made up of a group of men and women charged with shining light in the dark corners of the Maryland State House — the press."
Who covers the State House? We can’t tell you at http://thedailyrecord.com/...
The governor’s office denied a Public Information Act request from The Daily Record for a list of State House reporters. The request follows a new credentialing policy apparently aimed at excluding citizen journalists and bloggers.
Maryland may be blue, may have some progressive impulses among the state electeds, but it's still a Democratic Party machine-run legislature and state house.
“I am not sure that is public,” Nina Smith, a spokeswoman for Gov. Martin J. O’Malley, wrote in an email as part of a reply to a series of requests made for related information. “I will verify and get back to you.”
In October, the Daily Record noted the change in credential policy. Then, the state estimated there were 673 credentialed reporters. Now the governor's office says there are 113 with some more waiting to be approved.
Sears writes: "The new rules as discussed in the fall would have severely restricted who could get a credential by limiting it to reporters who work in the complex on a year-round basis — fewer than six reporters. Everyone else would be required to submit to a daily temporary credentialing and searches before entering each building in the complex."
Read more - it's short- and if you're in Maryland, contact your General Assembly members to tell them this is unacceptable in the 21st century.