Each semester, students in the college's Urban Affairs Reporting class (JOUR327) use Baltimore as a laboratory to cover issues of importance to cities.  The class is taught by Sandy Banisky, Merrill's Abell Professor in Baltimore Journalism, a former deputy managing editor of The (Baltimore) Sun. 

The class is organized like a newsroom project team.  Students develop story ideas and meet with residents, elected officials, business people and community leaders to produce a comprehensive, multi-platform report on a different topic each semester.    

The program is supported in part by a grant from the Abell Foundation. The (Baltimore) Sun provides classroom space and research materials. 

Fall 2009 - Reclaiming a Neighborhood: The Revitalization of Baltimore's East Side.  East Baltimore Development Inc. has relocated more than 800 families over the last eight years as it begins to rebuild a struggling neighborhood -- and create a new community --  just north of the Johns Hopkins medical campus.
 
Spring 2010 - East Baltimore: Ten Years Later. Biotech has not proved the answer for creating jobs and attracting residents to the new neighborhood. With construction stalled on the biotech park that was forecast to create 8,000 jobs, leaders of the redevelopment project now are looking for another economic anchor for the neighborhood.

Summer 2010 - More Than a Game: The Orioles and Baltimore. What does it mean to a city when its once proud baseball team loses season after season?

Fall 2010 - Searching for Healthy Food. In a city plagued with high rates of obesity, heart disease and stroke, Baltimoreans know they should be eating better. But in many neighborhoods, burger joints and corner stores are the only sources of food. Now, in a variety of ways, Baltimoreans are trying to make it easier for more people to find healthier foods.

Spring 2011 - Juvenile Justice in Baltimore City. In Baltimore alone, 4,700 cases were filed in 2010 in the city's Juvenile Justice Center. Meanwhile, as legislators and advocates argue over how to fix the system, about 160,000 youths -- some under arrest, some victims of abuse, some in foster care -- troop through the state system every year. 

Fall 2011 - Can Art Change Baltimore? Ten years after the state designated Station North an arts and entertainment district, city leaders say it’s too soon to know. And even the biggest boosters advise that art can’t fix all Baltimore’s ills. But in a city whose residents have struggled for years to find a way to stabilize neighborhoods, some city leaders hope art can stoke the economy and help improve Baltimore life.

Just 40 years after rioters took to the streets of Chicago displaying their anger over the death of Martin Luther King Jr., Barack Hussein Obama stood before thousands of jubilant supporters in the city’s Grant Park and became the first non-white male to claim victory in a U.S. presidential election.

The country had changed. During the summer of 2009, 12 University of Maryland journalism fellows probed what they came to see as the fastest-growing and least understood sets of voters -- Latinos, mixed-race and youth -- to find out how. 

Their work, edited by a team of University of Maryland faculty advisors, is a part of the national News21 journalism program.