Recognized for work reflecting its focus on investigative, accountability and community reporting, Baltimore Brew was honored with 26 awards by the Maryland-Delaware-DC (MDDC) Press Association at its annual luncheon meeting.

Leading the list was The Brew’s Mark Reutter, who was honored with a new MDDC award this year, The A-Mark Prize for Investigative Journalism.

Placing third among Maryland entries for “Cost escalations of a software contract held by a company owned by the husband of a deputy mayor,” Reutter received $2,000 and The Brew received $1,000.

In earning three Best of Show Awards – for Business Reporting, Local Column and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion – The Brew’s two-person newsroom was judged against submissions by the region’s major print and online news media, including The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Banner, Cape Gazette, (Delaware) News Journal, Baltimore Business Journal, Maryland Daily Record and other news organizations.

The awards were presented on Friday as MDDC members gathered in Annapolis to celebrate work completed in 2025.

This year’s contest admitted nearly 1,600 entries among 86 categories. There are six divisions in the contest governed by a publication’s total audience numbers, combining print and digital readership. A Best of Show award is given in each category across all divisions.

These entries were judged by news media professionals at the Florida State Press Association.

In addition to announcing award winners, MDDC took a bow for a recent accomplishment of its own.

This year the Maryland General Assembly passed the Local News for Maryland Communities Act, establishing a revenue-neutral model to strengthen and sustain local news organizations across the state.

MDDC helped lobby in Annapolis for this first-in-the-nation legislation, which requires state agencies to prioritize local news organizations for at least 50% of their advertising spending. The policy applies broadly to print, digital and broadcast outlets.

A-Mark Prize for Investigative Reporting

Baltimore City’s website was well-known to be confusing, dysfunctional and outdated. Yet, somehow, three years after city officials contracted with a company with close ties to Mayor Brandon Scott to overhaul it, the project’s costs ballooned and the site remained as defective as ever.

• Millions spent on City website redesign being handled by company with close ties to Mayor Scott (7/3/25)

• Repeated delays and soaring prices: Documents show Baltimore website redesign now projected to cost $3.9 million (7/17/25)

• Baltimore’s now $5.6 million website redesign will be out of date when it’s launched (10/16/25)

What started out as a $1 million contract with Fearless Solutions LLC soared to $5.6 million and still wasn’t fully operational. The Brew’s Mark Reutter found that a deputy mayor, who is the wife of the company’s founder had not disclosed the contract on her ethics form. (She amended it hours after our story was posted.)

Reutter verified that despite all the extra spending, the new site would operate on a soon-to-expire content management system. He also exposed an irregular selection process that rejected an original low bidder and reported that website redesigns in other cities were completed at a fraction of the price Baltimore was paying.

Additionally, his stories raised concerns about whether the site’s reliance on an outdated Drupal system makes the city vulnerable to a ransomware attack similar to the one that crippled government operations in 2019.

Best of Show: Business Reporting

Baltimore didn’t pull any punches when it announced last October the city was suing the company behind an app called MoneyLion that promises interest-free cash advances to get you a portion of your pay early.

“Not only is that wrong, it’s illegal,” Mayor Brandon Scott had declared, highlighting the city’s allegation that the app charges fees that add up to annual interest rates of more than 350% – or more than 10 times Maryland’s legal cap of 33%.

It had, however, been a different story earlier in the year in Annapolis where state lawmakers made it easier for such apps to operate.

• While Baltimore sues a money-lending app for preying on the poor, Maryland makes it easier for such apps to do so (11/28/25)

The modern-day equivalent of the exploitive “payday loan” according to consumer advocates, these apps got an exemption from Maryland’s 33% cap on annual interest rates thanks to industry lobbying.

Reporting for The Brew, Madeleine O’Neill explained how these so-called Earned Wage Access (EWA) services work and dug into the legislative history to explain how something so widely reviled by consumer advocates got so far with Maryland lawmakers.

Best of Show: Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

“From laying bricks to staffing hospitals, from opening restaurants to raising families, Hispanics and Latinos are part of Baltimore’s heartbeat. But it took tragedy to make that visible.”

So wrote Christian Arias to begin his award-winning feature story for The Brew and the filmmaker behind the documentary, “We Are Baltimore.”

• Joyful and defiant, “We Are Baltimore” celebrates the city’s Hispanic and Latino communities (5/15/25)

“When the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed on March 26, 2024, it was six Hispanic and Latino workers – members of our communities – who lost their lives,” he continued. “For a brief moment, the headlines remembered us.”

But the discovery that none of the more than $16 million raised by the Baltimore Community Foundation to  reinforce “community resilience” was a blow. Even after this was exposed, “only fraction of the funds eventually went to the local Hispanic community.

“We Are Baltimore” was a way to end the silence, Arias said, of the 50-minute bilingual documentary he made and that was part of his MDDC submission.

Arias wrote that he saw the film not just as a response to this erasure, but to the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown: “It challenges the dehumanizing generalizations that reduce us to stereotypes.”

Best of Show: Local Column

A quarter century after her brother’s death, Becky Kling Feldman composed a first-person piece for The Brew remembering her younger sibling, Lenny Kling, but also reflecting on grief, accountability and redemption in Baltimore’s justice system.

It was, of course, a heartbreaking story.

“My brother, Lenny, was murdered in Baltimore in March 2000. He was 22 years old. I was a year older. We were close in age, and it always felt like it was just the two of us,” she says at the start of her essay.

• To the teen who killed my brother (9/9/25)

But readers will want to follow along with Feldman as she explains her unlikely career path as well as her personal journey after the tragedy.

First, surprising friends and family, she became a public defender and then, after 15 years, went to work at a prosecutor’s office, where she worked with crime victims’ families.

“That might sound like the moment I chose justice over grace. But it wasn’t,” she wrote. “That’s where I finally learned and felt peace.”

Powerful Work

The three “Best of Show” awards represent a fraction of The Brew’s 2025 coverage recognized for excellence by MDDC.

The online publication was honored with 22 additional awards in its size division, including 13 first-place wins and 9 second-place citations.

They ranged from high-impact stories about unsafe conditions for city sanitation workers and a plan to move the Sisson Street trash facility to a spot beside a major waterway to photo-driven features chronicling the demise of the city’s architecturally precious Westside and a senior citizen-led weekly protest of the Trump administration.

Here is a sampling of the stories cited:

• Reutter won first place for Investigative reporting for Maryland’s public employee union quietly loses $1 million in phishing scam (9/26/25) and second place in that category for Uncle used county vehicle to do campaign work for his uncle, the County Executive (6/10/25).

• Reutter won first place for Environmental reporting for Scott administration seeks to push back sewer consent decree deadline from 2030 to 2046 (9/3/25).

• Shen won first place for State Government reporting for Amid nursing home inspection backlog, bedsores and bruises (5/7/25).

• Shen and Reutter won first place in the Local Government category for Unsafe conditions for city sanitation workers (12/23/25) and second place for Behind the plan to move a city trash facility next to a river (12/16/25).

• Dan Rodricks won first place for feature story for A nice alphabetically organized Baltimore neighborhood oddly saddle with a not-so-nice name (11/3/25), and Fern Shen and Jennifer Bishop won 2nd place in that category for Baltimore seniors, some in their 90s, are staging a weekly vigil to protest Donald Trump (4/25/25).

• Mark Reutter, Fern Shen and Madeleine O’Neill won first place for General News Story and second place for Continuing Coverage for Insurgent solid waste workers take on union leadership (12/23/25).

• Fern Shen won first place for Public Service for A water leak sinkhole leads to broader admissions of lax management (3/4/25).

• Fern Shen won second place for Trump Administration Impact coverage for Forcible removal of Fililpino workers from Carnival Cruise ship in Baltimore sparks protest (9/14/25).

• Madeleine O’Neill won first place for Business reporting for While Baltimore sues a money-lending app for preying on the poor, Maryland makes it easier for such apps to do so (11/28/25).

• Amy Davis and Fern Shen won first place for Growth and Land Use reporting for End times for Baltimore’s beautiful old Westside (9/17/25), and Fern Shen and Mark Reutter won second place in that category for Intense debate in Baltimore over relaxing the rules on development (12/2/25).

• Amy Davis and Fern Shen also won fist place for that package, End times for Baltimore’s beautiful old Westside  (9/17/25) for the Series category.

• Christian Arias won first place in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion category for  Joyful and defiant, “We Are Baltimore” celebrates the city’s Hispanic and Latino communities (5/15/25), and Fern Shen, Keondra Prier and Carson Ward won second place in that category for coverage and commentary as part of the package Leaders of Baltimore’s Black neighborhoods push back on zoning bills (12/2/25).

• Becky Kling Feldman won first place for Local Column for To the Teen who killed my brother (9/8/25), and Dante Davidson-Swinton won second place for 40 years ago this month, Baltimore got a trash incinerator. Unhappy anniversary! (4/22/25).

• Jennifer Bishop won first place for Werewolves of Hampden . . . and other creatures spotted last night (11/1/25) as well as second place for Baltimore seniors, some in their 90s, are staging a weekly vigil to protest Donald Trump (4/25/25).