The article brings to the communities attention what could be a failed real estate development at a time when economically we can least afford to have a failure. The article provides a link to an outside financial report to support its thesis and then because it is a blog, the community can respond and discuss the article. What is missing is more comments from community organizations, schools, cultural institutions and residents which would add to the reader's understanding of the project.

This piece expands nicely on earlier writings in the press, but there are no surprises, no questions that dig into things like how Baltimore could work better as a community or what would it take to get the community to unite behind being a better urban environment, what would it take to get developers to only build not only for the rich, what is a world-class city, can government be innovative??? Good journalism grabs me and makes me think, it should go beyond the facts.

I am having difficulty with this concept. I applaud the idea behind the effort, but I fail to understand how the NewsTrust effort supports the evolution of what is becoming the "new media". I would prefer a project that addresses the needs of the community in advancing its culture. Certainly good news reporting is a part of that, but for instance how do you address the recent report that says that people spend 60 seconds a day reading the news on their smart phones? The news reporting may be great, but unless journalists start examining the ecosystem that they have to work in and start figuring out how good journalism fits into that habitat, these very valid projects could turn out to be meaningless to the news consumer in the ... More »

Good journalism reports these events as they are happening and not after the fact. This is not the fault of the reporters. There are other real estate projects in Baltimore that may suffer the same fate and it is time to start digging into their progress as well before millions are wasted.