Maddog

I’ve been playing with Twitter recently. I’ll be the first to acknowledge I’m still getting the hang of it. Though I’ve had an account since February 2009, I’ve tweeted very little.

That changed after the Camp Fire. It was only then, when faced with the dynamic nature of the disaster, that I realized first-hand how useful the platform is for getting a lot of eyes on information quickly. I learned that lesson after posting a video of Bille Road in Paradise a few days after the blaze, as the region continued to smolder. It’s been viewed more than 27,000 times.

I’d originally kept my account private and used it occasionally to communicate with friends, mostly about journalism, music or personal stuff. Had I known a decade ago that I’d later use it professionally—or had read anything about Gen. James “Mad Dog” Mattis—I wouldn’t have made my handle @MaddogDaugherty. Granted, the combination of my seven-letter given name and my nine-letter anglicized Gaelic surname is too long for the platform. So, Maddog it was.

Lately, a few readers have asked me about its origin, so I figured I’d write about it. It’s a nickname from my years as a young reporter. Back in the early aughts, I earned a reputation for being a bit of a bulldog.

I’d often volunteer for assignments that other Chico Enterprise-Record reporters were loath to take on. One that immediately springs to mind stems from a grand jury report that alleged the county’s then-auditor/controller was a tyrannical department head. Nobody wanted to interview the guy, but I relished the thought of asking him why he was known for yelling at employees and slamming his door in their faces. He denied doing either.

Someone in the office­—I can’t remember who—started calling me Maddog. But what truly solidified the nickname was my reaction to a guy who assaulted me while I was walking downtown one evening with a couple of my work colleagues—former E-R city beat reporter Ari Cohn and photographer Glenn Fuentes. It was daylight when the three of us twentysomethings headed to a certain corner pub after work, so what happened was quite unexpected.

A drunken stranger walking toward us swung around and violently slapped my derriere. The shock wore off in a millisecond. That’s about how long it took me to pivot and shove the neanderthal into the side of a building, giving him a piece of my mind in language I was sure he could understand. When the man pulled back his fist, Ari took him down with a couple of good thumps and Glenn dragged him off a ways.

The guy’s embarrassed friends then hauled him to the far end of the block. He’d lost his keys and a shoe in fray, and I may have taunted him for a second or two by holding them up. I was pretty peeved. In fact, those keys ended up in the gutter—the shoe on a nearby roof.

A couple of police officers had been nearby and came over to suss out the situation. It was immediately clear who’d been in the wrong. I declined to press charges, and went about my night. The next day, Ari, a great storyteller, regaled the whole office with the tale, and the nickname stuck. The end.