Support Independent Journalism In Baltimore

Greetings from Baltimore, my hometown, where I never dreamed of becoming anything other than a journalist since serving as a proud paperboy delivering The Baltimore Sun as a kid. When I landed on The Sun’s City Desk as a K-12 education reporter in 1993, it seemed like a little bit of heaven here on Earth.

This town needs another publication about now, to produce the quality of journalism The Baltimore Sun had consistently delivered but no longer does, battered by years of deep staff cutbacks.

We need fair, but fearless reporting to hold public officials accountable. We need good, old-fashioned beat reporting.

Be there. Show up. Go meet your sources and develop relationships because we’re only as good as our sources. No, we can't always get what we need on the phone, in texts and tweets and Facebook posts.

At 1 a.m. on July 3, the familiar feeling took hold: The adrenaline kicked in, and few things focus my attention, or give me a greater sense of purpose, than chasing a big story.

So I drove 40 minutes to Brooklyn Homes, a public housing complex abandoned by the Baltimore Police Department where 30 people got shot during an annual community celebration. Two of the victims died, and 28 others suffered gunshot wounds, 23 of them teens. Before the blaze of gunfire erupted around 12:30 a.m. July 2, the BPD ignored repeated warnings in 911 calls of gunshots and even hundreds of people wielding guns and knives.

My hometown made me cry, more than once, in the 10 hours or so I have spent at Brooklyn Homes in the three weeks since. But I say a quick prayer, dry my eyes and get back to work because giving in to emotions on a big story turns you into the journalistic equivalent of a surgeon whose hands shake.

I had started The Baltimore Observer months earlier, but somehow covering this horrific tragedy rekindled my passion for local journalism like nothing else, and some of the journalists I respect most, along with many subscribers to the Observer’s daily newsletter, told me my reporting and writing moved them, really moved them, made some people cry, some seethe, and some asked again and again:

How could this possibly happen?

So I have decided to run with what I do best, and what Baltimore needs and deserves, returning to my local journalism roots as editor of The Baltimore Observer, a newsletter and website that answers to no one but God himself and the readers I serve.

I am applying for – and have reason to be hopeful that The Baltimore Observer has a good shot at receiving from a nonprofit – $20,000 in funding, along with rigorous training in developing a self-sustaining publication, from a nonprofit. The application is due August 28, and I have nearly completed it.

But for now, I’m seeking short-term funding to keep The Observer going, on top of cranking out breaking medical news for a major health publisher to pay the bills.

I spend much of my remaining time continuing to deliver a rich mix of stories that matter, stories that make a difference, thorough, well-written stories: breaking news, features, perspective pieces, profiles, investigative work and first-person pieces.

I’ve begun work on a series of stories about a juvenile justice system that has failed juvenile offenders for four decades. Too often, once they get locked up, we lose them for good. Indeed, juvenile incarceration is the No. 1 predictor of adult incarceration. The state of Maryland pays hundreds of thousands of dollars a year to keep one juvenile locked up, about 40% of the time for a nonviolent offense, and the overwhelming majority of those incarcerated are people of color, deprived of even basic education while incarcerated.

I also became the first reporter to cover a federal lawsuit alleging serious sexual harassment and discrimination at the highest levels of the Baltimore Police Department – repeated lies, vicious verbal abuse and vindictiveness targeting a high-ranking female officer. The suit names as defendants in what it alleges to be years of such abuse the department’s acting commissioner, his close friend and two other longtime male BPD brass colleagues.

This is my hometown. I care deeply about it. I long to shine a light that helps pierce the darkness.

In my hometown, kids have made me cry, more than a few times, since I covered city schools for The Sun in the 1990s — not in front of them, but deep in the night, when I could still see their tears in my mind’s eye, hear the echo of their stories and sometimes their sobs: the horrors they see that no child should ever witness, the heartbreak they know that I could not imagine enduring, watching mothers and fathers and classmates and teammates being shot, being harassed and demonized by police by age 10, being deprived of a decent school, a rec center, a safe playground, sidewalks where you can stroll and just be a kid instead of hearing gunfire every night.

But I also seek out and tell the stories of the many heroes among us and innovations that succeed in providing solutions to daunting challenges that have bedeviled my hometown for decades.

I hope to bring on interns, including ex-juvenile and ex-adult offenders, if they've put their crimes in the past permanently. I have taught hundreds of young journalists as an adjunct faculty member at my alma mater, the University of Maryland, College Park, and Loyola University Maryland. I want to teach these interns too. They know things about the city they can teach me, and all of us. I'd like to send them out with some advice, a reporter's notepad and a pen and then witness the magic happening.

My hometown needs another publication, and I've written thousands of stories for major news outlets including The Sun, my employer of 11 years, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian, The Boston Globe, CBSNews.com, CNBC.com, Baltimore Style Magazine, United Press International, The Center for Public Integrity and The National Catholic Reporter.

Please help support The Baltimore Observer to consistently deliver the superb journalism the city wants, needs and deserves.

Journalism matters.

A lot.

Still.

When we do it right.

Thank you

Gary Gately

Editor, Founder

The Baltimore Observer