The Baltimore City Historical Society yesterday presented its 2025 Living History award to the founder and lead reporter of the Baltimore Brew, saying their body of work exemplifies the value of community involvement in Baltimore civic affairs.

“We talk about freedom of the press, but it’s really meaningless unless there is a press,” said John C. Murphy in bestowing the honor at the Stony Run Friends Meetinghouse.

“I just can’t tell you how awed I am that a woman by the name of Fern Shen started this [online] newspaper. To me, it’s like creating a world. It was started 16 years ago, and it’s really been a hard-hitting publication that tells you what’s really going on in our city. It doesn’t report the news; it reports the significant news – the stories behind the news.

“Very soon she was joined by an equally talented guy by the name of Mark Reutter. Together they have produced an astonishing number of stories about what’s really going on in Baltimore City.”

Specializing in accountability journalism, The Brew was praised by the BCHS for “providing fresh, fair, insightful and reliable reporting about Baltimore” and for “bringing transparency and accountability to powerful governmental and corporate institutions and to covering issues that matter to all neighborhoods in the city.”

Asked by Murphy how many people regularly read the publication, dozens of hands shot up.

Veteran Journalists

Shen and Reutter began as print journalists and have over 80 years of cumulative experience.

Shen worked for the Evening Sun and Washington Post covering local politics and state government in Annapolis.

Reutter started in 1970 as a summer intern police reporter for the Evening Sun. He wrote for the Sunday Sun and Morning Sun before authoring an acclaimed history about steelworkers at Maryland’s onetime biggest employer, the Bethlehem Steel plant at Sparrows Point.

Shen was out of town and unable to make yesterday’s event, which attracted a capacity crowd to the Quaker meetinghouse.

Also honored were culinary historian Kara Mae Harris, historian and MSNBC co-anchor Antonia Hylton, Baltimore magazine senior editor Ron Cassie, and members of the Historic Laurel Cemetery Project.

Several Baltimoreans were honored in memoriam for their contributions to the city, including the late civil rights activist Helena Hicks, AFSCME Council 67 labor leader Glen Middleton Sr., and  homeless advocate Anthony Wann Williams. The Brew‘s appreciations of Hicks and Williams can be read here and here.