News+Media
Best of Baltimore
News+Media
BY RON CASSIE
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE MORGAN
MORNING CUP
MARTY BASS
JOINING WJZ IN 1977, Marty Bass helped define morning TV news in Baltimore for nearly a half-century before his recent retirement. In the early 1980s, of course, he co-hosted WJZ’s Eyewitness News Morning Edition with Oprah Winfrey. But his own exuberant storytelling and unmistakable love for the city in his signature segments over the years—from “Catchin’ Bass” to “Where’s Marty?”—are irreplaceable. No one over the past 48 years has introduced us to more local organizations, businesses, and people doing the kind of caring, authentic work that builds community.
CITIZEN WATCHDOGS
PROJECT SALT BOX
Borrowing their name from the city’s “citizen-forward and open for public use” yellow wooden salt boxes, Project Salt Box is a Baltimore-based volunteer initiative that has become an indispensable resource during the expansion of Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facilities across the U.S. Utilizing open-source records, their first effort exposed plans for a massive, new detention facility near Hagerstown. Tracking federal procurement contracts, infrastructure development, and real estate purchases, Project Salt Box maintains an interactive digital map, which documents properties under consideration for new detention facilities, including addresses, ownership status, building specs, and purchase status.
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COMMUNITY PUSHBACK
REMINGTON
Count the citizen protest over the city’s proposed relocation of Sisson Street solid waste drop-off center to the Jones Falls stream area as a big win for local residents and broader Baltimore. Initial plans called for moving the solid-waste site alongside the underutilized, but valuable urban waterfront and greenspace. Ultimately, after contentious community meetings and pushback from the residents of Remington and the leaders of Bikemore, among others, the city created a task force that recommended closing the facility rather than moving it next to Jones Falls and its floodplain. Kudos to the Baltimore Brew for their diligence in covering this contentious issue.
HOUSING AND DEVELOPMENT REPORTING
GIACOMO BOLOGNA, HALLIE MILLER
Baltimore Banner reporters Giacomo Bologna, who covers business and development, and Hallie Miller, who covers housing, do terrific work around the city’s frustrating development and housing issues. Together, for example, they broke a remarkable story around a New York businessman who had amassed some 700 rowhouses on the city’s east and west sides—roughly two-thirds of which have gone into foreclosure over the past year, sparking an FBI investigation. The vexing problems around slum landlords, vacant housing, failed developments, and the affordable rent crisis need such attention more than ever.
INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM
KATE CIMINI
Baltimore Sun journalist Kate Cimini won the inaugural MDDC Press Association and A-Mark Foundation Prize for Investigative Journalism for her series exposing staff misconduct and abuse at the recently shuttered Maryland National Guard’s Freestate Challenge Academy. Cimini’s work brought to light the institution’s years-long systemic failures and “culture of violence” deployed at the military-style boot camp and GED program for at-risk teens. Through public records requests, interviews with former cadets and staff, and a decade’s worth of program reviews, Cimini revealed troubling issues from chronic facility problems to staff shortages to malnourishment among cadets.
PUBLIC AFFAIRS HOST
TOM HALL
For the past decade, WYPR’s Midday with Tom Hall served as Baltimore’s town square for discussions around local and national news, politics, arts, sports, science, race, movies, medicine, education and the environment—in other words, you name it. Somehow, Hall covered it all, seamlessly mixing interviews, commentary, and listener comments. This spring, he stepped down as host of Midday and moved into a new role as the station’s senior news analyst. WYPR has said it is developing new programming for the Midday slot, but Hall’s amiable, but also informed and insightful on-air presence is already missed.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY MIKE MORGAN
DATA DIVE
From left: Greg Morton, Liz Bowie, Ryan Little, Rachel Mull, Allan James Vestal.
WHERE WOULD BALTIMORE be without The Banner’s serious, big-city journalism? After winning a 2025 Pulitzer Prize for work that highlighted the disproportionate impact of Baltimore’s opioid crisis, longtime education reporter Liz Bowie, data journalist Greg Morton, editor Rachel Mull, data visualization reporter Allan James Vestal, and former data editor Ryan Little earned a 2026 Pulitzer finalist nod for their series examining the city’s chronic public school transit problems. The nearly three-year project included a first-of-its-kind data analysis that tracked Maryland Transit Administration buses in real time and documented how transportation barriers contribute to absenteeism and inequities.
What's Up, Docs?
COMMUNITY BUILDING
SAVING ETTING STREET
The compelling documentary from Dena Fisher and Amy Scott follows master carpenter Shelley Halstead as she trains three young Black women in carpentry, electrical work, and plumbing. Together, they transform a block of abandoned rowhouses into a community of Black women first-time homeowners.
EULOGY FOR THE KEY BRIDGE
ECHOES FROM THE KEY BRIDGE: A BALTIMORE LONGSHOREMAN
Written and directed by activist/artist Maria Gabriela Aldana, Echoes from the Key Bridge: A Baltimore Longshoreman helps reveal the personal and profound impact of the Key Bridge collapse. (Editor’s note: Aldana contributed oral histories to Baltimore’s 2025 Key Bridge cover story.)
HOMAGE
BALTIMORE LEGEND
Independent filmmaker Bodine Boling’s homage to her grandfather, legendary Sun photographer A. Aubrey Bodine, seamlessly blends the development of his craft—and the city—while not shying away from his difficult personality.
IMMERSIVE EXPERIENCE
CRAB YARNS
Screened as part of the popular "BaltiShorts" program at the Maryland Film Festival, director Alexander Snider turned his summer following Caption C.J. Canby and his crew into a warm, observational documentary set around a Maryland tradition.
PROFILE
TATTOO MEDICINE
Directed by Dani Lopez, Tattoo Medicine is a moving profile of Baltimore tattoo artist Pili “Ojos Magnificos” Lopez, a queer Andean and Indigenous Colombian whose work invokes their ancestors.
PHOTOGRAPHY BY TYRONE SYRANNO WILKENS
MEDIA EDUCATION
DAVID ELLIOT
AMID BILLIONAIRE OWNERSHIP OF TV news outlets, newspapers, and social media platforms, the role of independent journalism cannot be overstated. It’s a space, fortunately, where Baltimore continues to shine. The nonprofit Banner is one example, but digital outlets like The Brew, Maryland Matters, and Baltimore Fishbowl—as well as print pubs, including The Daily Record, Baltimore Business Journal, Baltimore AFRO American, and BmoreArt—produce strong local journalism, too. With that in mind, the David Elliot- directed documentary, The Beat Goes On: The Story of Baltimore Beat, chronicles the collapse of the former City Paper and the launch of the city’s Black-led, alternative weekly. The behind-the-scenes doc captures the community-driven mission of the The Beat, a must-read pub for underreported—or missed entirely—city news, arts, and event coverage.
REINVENTION
NESTOR APARICIO
Dundalk native Nestor Aparicio got his start as a young sportswriter and rock music critic with The Evening Sun in the 1980s. Nicknamed “Nasty Nestor” during his sports talk radio days, his deep passion for Baltimore sports later took him to extremes at times, like when he led a “Free the Birds” fan walkout at Camden Yards during the O’s 14-year-skid. In recent years, however, he has reinvented himself with his Baltimore Positive podcast, bringing together not just sports figures for thoughtful conversation—often over crabs—but a plethora of politicians, nonprofit leaders, business leaders, artists, and journalists (including editors of this magazine).
STEP TO THE SIDELINES
GERRY SANDUSKY
Longtime WBAL-TV sports director Gerry Sandusky, the smooth, unflappable “Voice of the Ravens” since 2006, announced his retirement this spring after a four-decadeplus broadcasting career. The son of former Baltimore Colts line coach John Sandusky and a former Towson University tight end himself, Sandusky’s easy familiarity with the sport made him a natural fit to cover the Ravens. He’s called some of the franchise’s most iconic moments and his signature catchphrase, “The hay is in the barn,” became an anticipated moment once a Ravens victory was secured.
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