Saturday, February 9, 2008

February 9

Emmanuel M. Bryant of Lansdowne was murdered in the Southwestern on Thursday afternoon.

"Turner was Stephen's world." Then maybe he shouldn't have, you know, thrown him into the damned river. (Allegedly, of course.)

Annapolis police released a sketch of a suspect in January's double murder, but the Sun didn't run it.

The kids are talking about Nick Browning on Facebook. Meanwhile the Sun's Julie Scharper and Justin Fenton report on the (alleged) motive:
"He told police that he was upset that his father forced him to attend a Boy Scout camp in Western Maryland, where the Browning family had a vacation home and frequently spent weekends. A week away from his 16th birthday, he also resented that his father told him he could not immediately use a Ford Expedition that was to be a present, a source with knowledge of the investigation said."
The music director of Sheila D's church was charged with raping a 13-year-old churchgoer.

A woman in Annapolis has been charged with pimping out her 16-year-old daughter for money and crack.

The Original Steakhouse and Sports Theater in Parkville is holding a fundraiser for the Griffin family on Monday.

"Two Farmers Convicted and Sentenced for Causing the Deaths of Three Bald Eagles and a Great Horned Owl"

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Actually, The Sun ran the picture of the murder suspect in the print edition.

Maurice Bradbury said...

There's a print edition?

Anonymous said...

Surprised you link to an examiner story about facebook when the sun reports today what browning gave as a reason for slaughtering his whole family: not being able to use his birthday present a week early. crazy.

Anonymous said...

Hot damn! Does anyone else NOT want to have kids after the Browning story?! You'll be passed out on your couch on a friday night, after busting your hump all week trying to give your kids everything they want, and your f'ed up teenager pumps you full of bullets cuz he wants his $25K SUV NOW, not next week. F@#$%& UP! In the 'hood, teenagers steal cars and maybe sometimes hurt or kill people they don't know. In white suburbia, disgrunted spoiled bratz wipe out their entire family over "stuff" or not being allowed to go skiing for the 14th time this winter....

ppatin said...

"Nick said he retrieved his father's gun, and shot him in the head, the source said. Then he went upstairs where his mother, Tamara, and two younger brothers, 14-year-old Gregory and 11-year-old Benjamin, were sleeping, and allegedly shot them all."

Mother is upstairs and dad was on the couch downstairs? Maybe there was some family trouble going on.

ppatin said...

Holy shit, did anyone see thisidiotic editorial from yesterday's Sun?

"Now that the Browning teenager has a lawyer, all efforts should be made to move his case to juvenile court."

"juvenile authorities would review a youth's family, social and medical history and determine if the teenager would benefit from treatment in the juvenile justice system."

First of all anyone who thinks that MD's juvi system "treats" anyone is a fucking idiot. Second of all, Nicholas Browning killed his entire family! Being a quadruple murderer is not a treatable disease!

"It may be legal, but teenagers who enter the adult criminal justice system are often lost to it."

Well no shit this guy's going to be "lost" to the system. He murdered four people, he should (and hopefully will) spend every remaining day of his life in prison.

ppatin said...

"Being a quadruple murderer is not a treatable disease!"

Whoops, I made a mistake here. There is actually a three drug cocktail that treats murderers, and it has a 100% success rate. Unfortunately it can't be administered to "patients" who committed their crime when they were under 18...

Maurice Bradbury said...

I didn't put the links up, so can't speak for Charles, but I try to avoid linking to the Sun as much as I can, and if I have to link there to quote relevant parts of the story, because for whatever reason their links die quickly and then it's difficult, often impossible, to find the story in the archives again.

But here's the link and the quote:

"He told police that he was upset that his father forced him to attend a Boy Scout camp in Western Maryland, where the Browning family had a vacation home and frequently spent weekends. A week away from his 16th birthday, he also resented that his father told him he could not immediately use a Ford Expedition that was to be a present, a source with knowledge of the investigation said.

After allegedly killing his family, Browning went back to his friend's house, then spent the day at the mall before returning home, where he staged the discovery of the bodies and called 911, the source said."

ppatin said...

Clearly he should be tried in juvenile court, so that he can be released by the time he's 21

:rolleyes:

If he were released I hope he'd end up living next to whoever writes the Sun's editorials.

Anonymous said...

you try to avoid linking to the Sun as much as you can? why? most days, the sun is the direct or indirect source of most of the stuff on this blog. when it's not, it usually broke the stories in print or on its website, which were then chased by tv news and the examiner.

and ppatin: maybe the dad just fell asleep watching TV and the wife was tired and went to bed. falling asleep in front of the tv has been known to happen in both happy and miserable marriages.

ppatin said...

I know, that was pure speculation on my part. Regardless of what the family situation is, it doesn't change the fact that Nicholas Browning is a complete psycho who needs to be locked up for the rest of his life.

Anonymous said...

So now Sun reporters are posting anonymously about the superiority of their paper?
Even without regard to the quality of reporting the last poster tried to raise (and each news source has its own strengths and weaknesses, BTW) the main issue was the short life expectancy of Sun articles online.
I'll give The Sun an attaboy for the scoop on Browning's petulant reason for slaughtering the whole family, but it's no reason to pretend that every TV station and publication is forever chasing at her footsteps.

Anonymous said...

Let's not kid ourselves! The Sun is a complete joke! They have absolutely no respect or concern for the public. Do you remember their sober, reasoned editorials supporting Dixon for Mayor? The woman is a blithering idiot, who hires useless dregs like Mariott as Deputies. The Sun is one of the major factors responsible for Baltimore's disgraceful standing as a dangerous, corrupt hell hole.

Anonymous said...

I just thought, if the great '80s band The Replacements had grown up in Baltimore, do you think they would have written a song called "Beat Me on the Bus"?

Maurice Bradbury said...

"you try to avoid linking to the Sun as much as you can? why? most days, the sun is the direct or indirect source of most of the stuff on this blog."

Ok, I just answered that, but to re-iterate for the slow... go back in the archives and click on a link. If it's a Sun link, about 8 times out of 10 you will get "page not found." Not even an offer to let you buy access to the article from the archives-- the article will be gone. If ou go to the archives and try to find said article using keywords, sometimes you can find the article, sometimes you'll get no results at all, sometimes you'll get page after page of completely irrelevant results. Frustrating for readers, and such bad business sense it boggles the mind.

So, since we're bothering to work on this blog, why not make it helpful to readers in the future, rather than leading them down dead ends?

Interestingly, they do manage to keep live the links to the editorials, including the all-time low, "nonsensical diatribe about teenagers on the bus."

beat me on the bus, heh heh.

taotechuck said...

I try to link to whatever source has the best coverage of a story. Often, that's the Sun, which means the links will only work for two weeks. I think MJB's suggestion to quote liberally from the Sun may be the right solution, since I try not to link to half-assed TV stories that ripoff Sun articles.

MJB is right -- killing the stories is an incredibly foolish business decision. I don't know how much money the Sun generates from subscriptions to its archive, but there must be alternate revenue streams. How about a forced 15-second ad-view for anyone accessing an archived article? Targeted demographics, catered to specific subject matters, driven by relatively simple algorithims.

Sun suits, are you listening? You're getting some genius advice, here. Baltimore Crime alone would probably generate a good amount of ad revenue for you, for absolutely free.

Maurice Bradbury said...

They don't need our genius, just about every other paper on the planet keeps their links live but charges for archives. I think the stories are in there, they're just nearly impossible to find. Whoever built their site must have been paid by the hour, and now they're probably in a situation where they have to completely rebuild it and are unwilling to throw good money after bad to make the investment.

Newspapers in general have done a very poor job of adapting to the Internet. NYT: "The paradox is that more people than ever read newspapers, now that some major papers have several times as many readers online as in print. And papers sell more ads than ever."

They're like Prop Joe, stuck on an old model, oblivious to the Marloish incursion of free trade!

ppatin said...

And in the meantime people like David Simon whine about how the internet is destroying journalism. I love the guy's work, but he can be such a crank sometimes.

Caederus said...

Many papers are even going to free archives, like the NY times.

If you want any idea of how much the Sun dosn't get the internet. A couple of years ago they let the domain registration lapse for sunspot.com (their site at the time). So for over a day the web site didn't work and email bounced.

All for a lack of someone checking the webmaster email address for a couple of months and not seeing all the disconnect notice requesting $40 for the renewal.

Maurice Bradbury said...

Times charges $3.95 an article or $15.95 for 10! When's this free-ness happening? I'll postpone my research!