Baltimore Station

During the marathon debates this spring over Mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake's plans to overcome Baltimore's severe budget crunch, one issue dominated the discussion out of all proportion to its importance to city residents: the fate of the Mayor's Office of Cable and Communications. That's a branch of the city government that runs TV25, Baltimore's public access cable channel. Ms. Rawlings-Blake had been strongly critical of it when she was City Council president, saying it was little more than a $750,000-a-year public relations department for former Mayor Sheila Dixon.

The news last week that Conan O'Brien was going to host a show on TBS starting in November was met with a ton of talk about late-night TV. But amid all the chatter, almost nothing was said about Jay Leno and his move back to late night on NBC — the action that sent O'Brien off on his journey to the land of basic cable. Could it have been just a few shorts months ago that the news media were filled with nonstop talk about the "Leno Factor" and how it was "killing" the late news on top-notch NBC affiliates across the country, including WBAL in Baltimore?

An unidentified man was found shot in the hand Wednesday afternoon near a gas station in North Baltimore, according to city police. The man was taken to an area hospital, where he was expected to be treated and released, police said. A police spokesman said officers were called about 4:30 p.m. to the intersection of The Alameda and Belvedere Avenue, where they found the man near an Exxon station. Police said they were investigating the possibility that the man's wounds were self-inflicted.

The life and death of Nicole Sesker - stepdaughter of Baltimore's previous police commissioner, drug addict and homicide victim - emerges now as the central image from a tragic tableau 40 years in the making, a vast crowd scene with thousands of weary faces. Sesker's death stands out to some because of its irony: Her stepfather was Leonard Hamm. But most who know better, who know that addiction and alcoholism infests the best of families, look past that and see something familiar: the end of a life of pain.

He's not exactly journeying into a brave new world, but Bill Fanshawe clearly gets a kick out of being something of a pioneer. Today his TV station becomes the first in Baltimore to broadcast its local newscasts in high definition, meaning that viewers will be able to see anchors Jeff Barnd and Jennifer Gilbert more clearly than ever. Welcome to the future, TV watchers. "I don't know if it's the same as going from black and white to color, but it's comparable," says Fanshawe, general manager of WBFF (Channel 45)

Last week on Super Tuesday, all-news cable TV made it plain that CNN, MSNBC and Fox News have displaced the major networks this primary season as the best on-screen source for political coverage. Last night, the 24/7 cable news channels were again dominant, but this time they stole the thunder from local TV news operations - making area broadcasters that were unwilling to cut into network prime-time programming seem all but irrelevant with their 11 p.m. newscasts in cities such as Baltimore.

The way Joseph Carroll sees it, he has a second chance at life with his family. "I'll take that," Carroll, a 59-year-old Army veteran and father of four who brought back from Vietnam a propensity toward alcohol abuse. Now, after a spell on the streets and a five-month stint at The Baltimore Station, a treatment center whose population is made up mostly of military veterans, Carroll plans to return to his wife in Portsmouth, Va., after Thanksgiving. "If she don't change her mind," he said, laughing.

Head down, eyes focused, Alexis Brown sat on a bench at Penn Station yesterday, typing fast on a laptop. "I'm writing a paper that's due in an hour," said Brown, a second-year law student at the University of Baltimore, her tone slightly anxious. She'd been too busy to notice, she said, that the train station was newly equipped as a Wi-Fi "hot spot," a system that would enable her, if she chose, to send her paper directly to her professor via e-mail. The Wi-Fi setup was established Monday at Penn Station and at four other Amtrak terminals on the Northeast corridor - Philadelphia's 30th Street Station, Wilmington Station in Delaware, Washington's Union Station and Penn Station in Manhattan.

By 6 a.m., the free parking lot at the West Baltimore MARC station is almost full. The only sounds on the rickety wooden platform: cars whizzing by on U.S. 40, the blare of a police siren and the horn of the incoming train, a cue for the sweep of people that rushes inside. This is no Penn Station. There are no coffee shops or places to buy a paper, just mounds of trash along the side and a few partial shelters that don't do much good in the rain and snow. But city and state planners view the threadbare West Baltimore train station as the potential key to unleashing the redevelopment of an area long neglected and decimated by an unfortunate endeavor dubbed "the highway to nowhere."

For two cities so close whose fortunes are so entwined, Baltimore and Washington have an abysmal lack of transit connections. Greyhound runs a comprehensive schedule but is a bit pricey for regular commuter use at $12 one way. Its Baltimore station is stuck in an industrial district far from the light rail or subway. The MARC train costs $7 between Baltimore and Washington (with discounts for regular users) but runs a restricted schedule - especially on the Camden Line - with no weekend service.