But if the racing fans got up from their tables and walked past the snack bar, they would discover a live sport beyond the chatter of the race announcers.

Old School Boxing, a small gym operated by former amateur boxer Buddy Harrison, has found a home at the struggling racetrack.  Boxers train and coaches shout in a large room formerly used for placing race bets, with a floor-to-ceiling window that overlooks the empty racing oval.  Signed photos of famous fighters are taped to the walls.

A team of volunteer coaches is there every weeknight from 5-9 p.m. and Saturday mornings.  They view their positions as a vocation, working to keep kids off the street and in the gym, acting as a strong male role model that many of the youngsters lack.  (Each one of the trainers lit up when they saw me use my left hand to scribble notes – “A southpaw!”)

“Buddy’s one of the few owners who lets them all in, and gives them all an opportunity,” said Douglas Avery, one of Old School’s coaches, who also volunteers in group homes on the weekends.  Avery “pops up at the school” on his young boxers, showing up to make sure they’re taking care of their studies.

An average night at the gym finds 4 and 5 year olds nearly outweighed by their gloves, teenagers eager to turn it loose in the ring, and self-assured veterans who flow smoothly through their workouts and pose for pictures with the kids.

The pride of Old School Boxing is 15-year-old Dusty Harrison, Buddy’s son.  The unassuming 138 pounder has been fighting since he was a kindergardener.  Harrison has won the national championship for his age group and weight for the past five years.  His resume includes 193 fights, with a record of 162-31. On a recent fight night, the crowd scattered at tables throughout the room crept closer to the ring as Harrison stepped through the ropes to take on a 152 lb., challenger a few years older.  Dusty often has trouble getting other boxers his age to step in the ring with him.  He conducts himself like a fighter twice his age, sizing up his opponent, memorizing his tendencies and picking apart his weaknesses.  He moves with preternatural speed, seemingly aware of each punch before it arrives.

“A lot of people like to do the same thing over and over,” Harrison said.  ”I like to counter, see what works, see what doesn’t.”

A Sampling of Places Boxing Has Taken Dusty Harrison

View Dusty’s Fights in a larger map

The sports of boxing and horseracing are long past their respective glory years.  Racetracks have seen profits erode at the hands of online gambling and the sports book at casinos.  Boxing lost its target audience to the flashy and comparitively violent world of Mixed Martial Arts.  At Rosecroft, the two struggling sports are propping each other up.

Lisa Watts is the vice president of operations at Rosecroft – and the unofficial treasurer for Old School Boxing.  The race track prints promotional posters for the weekly fights, featuring photos of the kids.  Watts has embraced the role of part-time boxing promoter, saying that the weekly fight nights held in the grandstand lead to increased foot traffic for the track.

“It creates opportunities for the kids to get experience, and for us to have another kind of show here,” Watts said.

Rosecroft is facing dire financial problems. The track filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy last June and recently announced that it would be closing its doors on April 19, only to be granted an 11th hour reprieve by $350,000 from area developer Mark Vogel, who is hoping to buy the track.  The infusion of cash will keep the track open until July.  The track is trying to bring back live racing and introduce card table gaming -measures that would bring in sorely needed revenue and preserve jobs for track workers.  So far, state legislators have voted against or ignored such efforts.

Harrison recently testified on behalf of Rosecroft in Annapolis state house, appealing for state funding to save the track. He caused something of a stir in the chambers, causing legislators to abandon the issue at hand and ask him questions about boxing.  Several politicians promised him money.  So far, he hasn’t seen any of it.

Harrison charges gym dues, but many of the kids can’t afford them.  He struggles to make the rent for his gym, even though Rosecroft has given him a significant break on costs, occasionally selling one of his beloved old cars to make ends meet.

“These people at Rosecroft helped me,” Harrison said.  ”If it wasn’t for them, I would have nowhere to go right now.  They’re talking about shutting down on July 1st, but I’ll figure out something.”

I decided to pay a return visit to Nwaolu to see how the block was doing four months after the murder.  I discovered that another crime drama had been played out, and Nwaolu had found himself in the middle of it.

Click below to listen to my interview with Azu Nwaolu:

The American University Women's Rugby team practices on a makeshift pitch, or field, located in a triangular patch of grass in between Nebraska Avenue, Van Ness Street, and 41st Street NW.

A group of forwards receives instructions for their next drill.

A group of forwards practice "rucking over" - a tackling drill that works to maintain possession of the ball after an advancing player has been brought down.

Much of the violence of rugby takes place at the bottom of rucks, once a player has been taken to the ground. A tackled player has less than one second to release the ball in the direction of her teammates, or a penalty will be called.

A pedestrian watches as the team continues drilling. The pitch is located in the middle of a residential area.

A group of Backs practice passing drills in a coordinated effort to move the ball downfield. Passes may only be made to the side and backward, and teammates may not advance past the ballcarrier.

Assistant coach Lindsey Nugent, 23, (at right) advises the Backs during a break after passing drills.

Head coach Deanna Church (at right) directs what she calls a "diamond of support" drill, a three-person attacking drill to advance the ball downfield. Ruggers are aiming to advance the ball to the opponent's in-goal area, resulting in a "try," which is worth 5 points.

A back passes to a teammate as she is brought down by the opposition.

A line of forwards in scrum formation. A scrum is a way of restarting the game after the ball has gone out of play. Players bind to one another with their arms and the two sides engage, as players fight for possession of the ball by driving their legs.

Because AU Women's Rugby is a club sport, the team is allotted a certain amount of money in the school's athletics budget, but players often cover most transportation costs and purchase some equipment.

A group of AU students takes in the action on the pitch while walking on 41st Street.

The team gathers around head coach Deanna Church as she goes over instructions during a run-through in preparation for the next game. The team will play a team comprised of former AU players, now alumni, on April 10.

Players wear minimal protective gear, which is often limited to not much more than a mouthpiece and a pair of long socks.

A "scrumhalf" plays the ball off the back of a ruck and passes to a "flyhalf," who will lead an offensive attack. The team is surrounded by busy streets on all sides during its practices, which are held during rush hour Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday each week.

A look at Coach Church's clipboard, with a breakdown of the team's practice agenda. The tally marks represent the number of dropped balls, which result in physical penalties - pushups or sprints.

Defenders crowd the line as Coach Church prepares to pass the ball backward to a teammate after a stoppage in play.

The team receives criticism after the run-through. "This is a challenging place to practice," said Coach Church. "We don't even have goalposts to practice kicking." Kicks placed between the uprights are worth 2 points, and kicking accuracy can mean the difference in close games.

The team finishes practice with a lap around the pitch as they sing the lyrics to "Build Me Up Buttercup," a longstanding AU tradition.

Storm clouds gather as the team huddles for final remarks at the end of practice, and a closing chant of "Motivated, Motivated, Downright Dedicated."

This first photo is designed to be an effective example of composition.  More specifically, I shot this from a lower level than the chess players to bring the viewer closer to the action, and framed everything else out to show the intensity of their posture and expressions.

Eric Robinson, 45, and Ishtire Worthy, 25, face off in a game of chess in Dupont Circle Thursday evening.

The second photo is meant to be an example of timing the photographic moment I’m trying to capture – in this case, the moment that a frisbee partner makes a jump catch.  I shot the photo from over the shoulder of the frisbee thrower, to give the photo added depth.

Twins Dan and Dom Heynen toss the frisbee in Dupont Circle on Thursday evening.

The third photo is a demonstration of an extreme close-up, with additional scenery off to the right side of the photograph.

Moss grows on a tree's bark in Dupont Circle.

The fourth photo is meant to be a demonstration of a limited color palette – in this case, a saturation of gold-color from the yellow brick, the lights of the bank sign, and the street lamps.

Gold light bathes the Suntrust Bank on the corner of Dupont Circle, NW and Massachusetts Avenue, NW on Thursday evening.

The fifth photograph I selected was meant to demonstrate use of light, with the light source coming in from behind the camera and casting shadows across the bottom of the photograph, as well as lighting up the tree in the main part of the photo.

Sunset throws shadows across Dupont Circle on Thursday evening.

Check out my full story over at the Baltimore Brew.

Thanks for reading.

Jason

On Friday I had the chance to sit down to lunch with the Aging Newspapermen’s Club, a group of former Baltimore Sun reporters, rewrite men, and photographers.   The group convenes every Friday at Enrico’s sports bar, at the corner of Pratt and Haven in East Baltimore, to trade war stories, catch up on each other’s latest ventures, and talk an impressive amount of shit.

All in good humor, of course.

I was invited by Rafael Alvarez, a 20 year veteran of the Baltimore Sun’s city desk and a true Baltimore original.  During my visit, Alvarez recounted the time that he and David Simon pulled an epic April Fool’s joke on their faithful rewrite man David Ettlin, who was also at the table in the back room of Enrico’s.

Alvarez and Simon had conspired with the spokesman for the Baltimore County Police Department to call Ettlin with a hot story about a former steelworker who stabbed his estranged wife through the heart with his Oral-B 60 toothbrush.  Ettlin breathlessly typed up the story with the phone pressed to his ear as Alvarez and Simon howled in laughter across the newsroom.  Ettlin recalled the details of the gag as if it had been phoned in to him yesterday.

The gang traded gifts for the holidays.  Among them: a framed and remarkably unflattering portrait of Bill Marimow – a former Sun editor whose name didn’t exactly stir feelings of holiday cheer,  a photocopy of an old Baltimore News American cover story featuring the unfortunate (and, many agreed, deliberate) headline typo of “pubic affairs”, and a shrinkwrapped copy of the last edition of The Evening Sun (pictured above).

This story is a bit short, since I opted to spend most of my time listening instead of scribbling notes. Truth is, it was a helluva way for a journalism grad student to spend an afternoon.

Thanks guys.

The Baltimore Sun, the paper of record for Baltimore and the largest newspaper in the state of Maryland, is steadily shrinking.  Multiple rounds of staff cuts have rendered the paper incapable of covering beats it once devoted multiple reporters to.

According to a Sun story by reporter Lorraine Mirabella, the latest cuts occurred in April of 2009, and left the paper with 144 total newsroom staff.  At the height of the paper’s strength, it had employed as many as 500 people to cover Baltimore and its environs.

Last year, the Baltimore Examiner, a free daily that launched in Baltimore in 2006, shut its doors.  The paper’s mission had been to cover a lot of ground with short, quick hitting stories, functioning as almost a localized version of USA Today.  Officials at Clarity Media Group, the Denver based media company that owned the paper, blamed declining advertising revenue and proximity to its sister publication in Washington, DC.

A pool of experienced, unemployed journalists had formed in the city.  Soon, entrepreneurial web sites began popping up, bent on covering stories that local print outlets weren’t able to focus on.

Flexibility and Growing Pains

Stephen Janis is a former city hall reporter for the Examiner, and partnered with a few of his colleagues to form Investigative Voice, a news site devoted to in-depth coverage of issues peculiar to Charm City.

A recent collection of top stories: a story on community activists struggling against prostitution and drug use in Pigtown, a piece on an 81-year-old healthcare advocate being sent to jail for trespassing during a protest, and an insider story on Mayor Sheila Dixon conversing with the attorney prosecuting her on corruption charges during a break in the trial.

“The idea would be to be topical, and not as regionally focused,” Janis said of the site.  “That we would have a certain type of story, and that story could be within the confines of the city.”

According to Janis, the freedom of the web has allowed him to dig deeply into specific conflicts in various neighborhoods, more than the Baltimore Sun is capable of with its thinly stretched staff.

“We just did a series called ‘Dispatches from Brooklyn’, with multiple stories and multimedia, where we get into the neighborhoods, get to know everybody, and find out where the point of conflict is,” Janis said.  “Legacy media can’t interview an average homicide detective or a crack dealer, but it works in our environment.”

There have been disadvantages to being an independent news outlet.  Janis has occasionally encountered what he called “digital segregation” at news events.

“One thing we did is make professional press passes with our logo that identified us,” Janis said.  “You have to act the part and believe in what you’re doing, and you have to use your skills to get people to talk to you.”

The site has been a learning experience for Janis, a veteran investigative reporter, on what readers of local news sites are looking for.

“We realized that the public values really strong watchdog journalism, and doesn’t value just having someone at city council hearings,” Janis said.  “You learn to come up with a mix over time that works.”

Jeff Quinton runs Inside Charm City, recently named “Best News Blog” in the Mobbie Awards, a blog awards contest run by, ironically, the Baltimore Sun.

“I try to post hard news, with some opinion, especially angles of bigger stories that might get missed,” Quinton said.  “I hear a lot of positives.”

Quinton recently started using Google Wave, a new collaborative multimedia communication tool, to cover local news and initiate discussion among readers.

“I’ve also gotten news tips there,” Quinton said.  “Someone posted a statement from Hopkins Hospital that they’d had a settlement with the union of their maintenance workers, before it appeared anywhere else.  I’ve also been using it for reader engagement and town halls.”

Despite its success, Quinton’s blog has ruffled some old media feathers around town.

In April, Quinton said he received an email from a Sun reporter asking him to stop excerpting portions of Sun stories longer than four sentences in his blog posts.  When another blogger at Inside Charm City posted Sun material that exceeded the request a few days later, Quinton received a cease-and-desist letter.  The story was picked up in WIRED Magazine.

Then in November, as Mayor Sheila Dixon’s criminal trial was winding down, Quinton posted a piece critical of Baltimore Sun reporters in their coverage of the trial, saying that they had “dropped the ball” by not tweeting from the courtroom.  Sun reporters fired back, citing a courtroom ban on the use of Twitter and pointing to the rest of their coverage.  Local news site Baltimore Brew chronicled the exchange.  Quinton updated the post to clarify the courtroom ban and downplayed the flare-up.

“It was one of those situations where it was a longer blog post, and not everyone read the entire thing,” Quinton said.  “I tried to let it blow over because generally I have a good relationship with the people I deal with at the Sun.”

Indeed, several Sun reporters that blog on the paper’s web site have linked to Quinton’s posts about problems on the MARC train to DC, or speculation of the Real World television show coming to Baltimore.

Hope for Collaboration?

Dr. Stacy Spaulding is a professor of journalism at Towson University, where she teaches courses on new media.  Before moving to academia, Dr. Spaulding was a reporter for the San Bernardino County Sun in California.  She is the author of New Media Mobtown, a blog on new media trends.

“I think what they’re doing is what alternative media has always done well, and that’s covering news from angles that aren’t being covered,” Spaulding said.  “Having a lot of vigorous, outspoken alternatives is actually quite in keeping with what we’ve known throughout our history.”

Spaulding said that the Sun’s streamlined staff has come at a cost.

“We’ve lost our most experience layer of reporters and editors, which means you’ve got decades and decades of the city and its institutions and its nonprofits and its people that are just gone,” Spaulding said.  “While we have some wonderful, enthusiastic, talented reporters on staff, I just don’t think they can make up for the lost knowledge.

Spaulding has seen the Sun link to several Investigative Voice stories, and is hoping for increased linking between blogs, news sites, and legacy media.

“Despite all this talk of competition, journalists have always collaborated.  We’ve always called the television reporter to tip him off on a story, and gotten tips from their sources too,” Spaulding said.

“You Get What You Pay For”

Scott Peterson is the spokesperson for Mayor Sheila Dixon.  He is responsible for fielding inquiries from the television, radio, print, and now web-based media outlets who want access to the mayor’s office.

Mostly, the web outlets aren’t calling.

“The majority of who contacts me are still the mainstream media,” Peterson said.  “The one exception is Investigative Voice.  [Stephen] Janis is still engaging the media relations office.”

Peterson said, aside from Investigative Voice, mainstream media is still the source of the stories that get the most attention in City Hall.

“These other sites are not breaking news stories,” Peterson said.

Rafael Alvarez spent 20 years on the city desk at the Baltimore Sun, before exiting the newspaper business and moving to Los Angeles to embark on a career writing for television.  His credits include “The Wire”, the crime and political drama set in Baltimore City and created by fellow Sun veteran David Simon.

Alvarez has returned to Baltimore and regularly contributes to Investigative Voice, Baltimore Brew, Welcome to Baltimore, Hon!, and other local sites.

However, Alvarez remains skeptical of claims that blogs and other types of news sites can replace a fully staffed city newspaper.

“The old patient isn’t dead, and the new baby isn’t really totally born yet,” Alvarez said.  “I think we’re figuring it out as we go along.”

Alvarez cited a story he worked on for Investigative Voice on stem cell research as an example of how newspaper reporters possessed a level of curiosity that “bordered on OCD.”

He was covering a conference of stem cell researchers in Baltimore, and he asked a doctor from one of the labs what the best tool for getting the real story of stem cell research out to the public had been.

“Without missing a beat, she said ‘newspaper reporters,” Alvarez said.  “She said if she had the budget, she would hire them. They became almost as knowledgeable as the doctorate fellows in the lab, because they were writing about it every day.”

According to Alvarez, the written word has never been worth less than it is now, and he questioned the quality of news content available for free online.

“If there’s one thing that’s true of America, it’s that you get what you pay for,” Alvarez said.  “There were families who drank Coke, and there were families who drank Shasta.”

“Who the hell wants to drink Shasta?  There’s a reason it cost 19 cents a can,” Alvarez said.