Reporter

American justice is administered in various forums - from local magistrates to the Supreme Court to specialized courts for taxes, military justice and an array of other issues. But all of these tribunals share basic principles of justice. Both parties in a case have equal access to evidence. Judges don't favor prosecutors. Administrators don't meddle with judicial decisions. But one jurisdiction, the Baltimore-based Coast Guard administrative law system, apparently has not been adhering to the principles of fairness.

John Woestendiek has been a features reporter at The Sun for six years. Previously he worked as a reporter, columnist, national correspondent and editor at four other newspapers -- the Arizona Daily Star, Lexington (Ky.) Herald-Leader, The Charlotte (N.C.) Observer and The Philadelphia Inquirer, where he received a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting in 1987 for his reporting on prisons and mental institutions. Woestendiek, 53, lives in South Baltimore with his dog, Ace. Work on the series began in February, when reports came out about a new DNA test that identifies what breeds are in dogs.

Alison Gaylin, author of the mystery thriller Trashed, proves not only that you can go home again, but also that you can return a success. Gaylin says Trashed involves a tabloid reporter who covers a grisly series of celebrity murders in Hollywood. Along the way, the reporter winds up solving the crime and becoming a target herself. Gaylin, who also works as a freelance writer for In Touch Weekly, lives in Woodstock, N.Y., with her filmmaker husband, Mike Gaylin, and daughter, Marissa.

It certainly hasn't been a good week to be a sideline reporter.Between Jim Gray's little tete-a-tete Sunday night with Pete Rose and Chad Curtis' snub of Gray two nights later after World Series Game 3, one could wonder if the job of sideline reporter, thought to be among the cushiest in the business, will be worth the time and trouble.But some industry officials say this week's events are but a blip on the control room screen, and expect business to go on as usual, with reporters interviewing athletes and coaches and asking occasionally tough questions.

The first year into a potential eight-year deal is far too early to nail down concrete trends, and CBS Sports President Sean McManus is far too classy an individual to say "I told you so," but, if numbers from the Hollywood Reporter are accurate, McManus may have reason to do just that.After CBS yanked away the rights to the AFC from NBC last January with a $500 million-per-year average offer, McManus and Mel Karmazin, then the No. 2 man at CBS, said over and over that the network expected to make a profit from NFL telecasts, even if it was only a dollar.

THE FIRST time I heard it I shrugged it off, figuring it was just a bad choice of words from a distraught mother caught in the glare of lights from a TV news camera. Then it came again -- the father this time, quoted by a newspaper reporter -- and I realized there was nothing accidental about the description.The word was "average." This is how his parents describe Travis Savoy, a 14-year-old Bladensburg High School freshman who stands accused of robbing a pizza deliveryman last week and then, after the money was handed over, shooting him to death.

AT THE END of the classic science fiction movie "The Thing" -- after a group of American servicemen and civilians somewhere in the Arctic fricassee a critter from outer space -- the lone journalist in the group grabs the microphone of a short-wave radio."

Sun columnist John Steadman, a veteran of the Baltimore sports scene for more than four decades, will be inducted into the National Sportscasters and Sportswriters Association Hall of Fame, joining some of the greatest names in American sportswriting.Steadman will be enshrined in the Salisbury, N.C.-based NSSA Hall during a ceremony tomorrow night that will mark one of the most storied and varied careers in local sports journalism.Steadman was a catcher in the Pittsburgh Pirates' farm system, but turned to journalism when his baseball-playing days ended, first catching on as a part-time reporter with the old Baltimore News-Post.

BOGOTA, Colombia -- He has won a Nobel Prize, says there are books he needs to write and is about to celebrate his 72nd birthday. So it came as something of a shock to Colombians when the novelist Gabriel Garcia Marquez recently bought a money-losing newsmagazine here and then promptly joined its reporting staff.To Garcia Marquez, the decision makes perfect sense. For years, he said, he had dreamed of using his Nobel Prize money to organize a newspaper, so when a group of young editors and reporters came to him with a proposal to buy and overhaul the newsweekly Cambio, he welcomed it as a chance to return to his first love.

The Union forces appeared to be on the way to a major victory during the early hours of the first battle of Bull Run, and in midafternoon, the New York Herald reporter telegraphed his editors that he was heading back to the office "with details of a great battle. We have carried the day. The rebels ... are totally routed."In New York, extras were on the streets by 5:30 that afternoon of July 21, 1861, hailing a great victory. But on the field at Manassas -- as the South calls the battle -- the tide had turned and the Union forces were routed by a fierce Confederate counterattack.

I think the president should invite Erin Andrews to the White House for a beer. But if Mr. Obama wants to include the creepy peeping Tom who videotaped the ESPN reporter naked through a hole in her hotel room wall, plus all the clowns at Fox, CBS and the New York Post who televised the video or ran still pictures taken from it, he is going to need more than a picnic table on the White House lawn. It seems to me that if the president of the United States is now refereeing community racial dust-ups, we ought to be able to count on him to step in when the national media and the world of sports demonstrate - 30 years after the courts granted women sports reporters equal status - that they haven't learned a thing.

Every reporter has a story about wearing the wrong thing at the wrong time - business suit while covering a hurricane, ripped jeans in a federal courtroom - and I suspect that Della Frye, our State of Play heroine, might tell colleagues about the time she clacked into a hospital-turned-crime scene in trendy high heels. I winced at this scene, though I also noted her striking black trench coat and sophisticated gray sweater. There's a reason I responded strongly to the fashion in this movie about journalists tracking a major political scandal with murderous consequences: The reporters were styled after my colleagues at The Baltimore Sun, and Della, played by Rachel McAdams, after me. Costume designer Jacqueline West said she wanted reporters to see State of Play, which stars Russell Crowe as a well-worn police reporter, and "identify with the look."

W. Robert "Robbie" Wallis, a longtime reporter who was later editor in chief of The Aegis in Harford County for a decade, died Friday of heart failure at the Lorien Bel Air nursing home. He was 77. Mr. Wallis was born and raised in Bel Air and graduated from Bel Air High School in 1948. He earned an associate's degree in pre-law from the University of Baltimore in 1965. Mr. Wallis' entry into the world of journalism was unconventional. In 1949, while working as a projectionist at the Bel Air Theater, he listened to a basketball game on the radio and then wrote up an account of the game and sent it to the editor of the old Harford Gazette.

Albert Sehlstedt Jr., a veteran reporter and editor for The Sun who covered such historic events as man landing on the moon and the Challenger disaster, died Thursday at St. Elizabeth Rehabilitation and Nursing Center. He was 86 and had suffered from Alzheimer's disease. Mr. Sehlstedt was hired at The Sun after his graduation in 1947 from Loyola College, an education interrupted for two years while he served in the Navy in the Pacific during World War II. His final byline appeared in 2005, on an obituary for Baltimore investment banker Julius M. Westheimer.

DENVER - Presidential conventions are revving up, so it must be time to start tearing them down. You've heard the criticism: Conventions have become meaningless. They're glorified commercials, stripped of all real suspense, choreographed more tightly than a Beijing opening ceremony. There's no real news, so why bother? In fact, conventions still matter - just not the way they used to. Yes, with so many chasing the same story, the coverage can get a bit derivative. The Associated Press explained the nature of modern conventions the other day by resorting to words like "choreography" and drawing comparisons with sports events such as the opening and closing ceremonies at the Olympics.

Reporting suggests assumption of guilt Most Americans insist on solid evidence of guilt before they believe an allegation of criminal conduct. That explains why many people refuse to accept federal prosecutors' conclusion that scientist Bruce E. Ivins was the anthrax killer ("Doubts persist on Ivins' guilt," Aug. 8). There are just too many holes in that case to be certain the government could prove Mr. Ivins' guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. And many people also remember officials seeming certain that Mr. Ivins' colleague, Steven J. Hatfill, had committed those crimes and the irreparable damage that accusation did to an innocent person's reputation.

Ralph G. Stup, a retired U.S. Department of Agriculture reporter and former longtime Elkridge resident, died Monday of heart failure at Seminole Shores Living Center in Norton Shores, Mich. He was 89. Mr. Stup was born and raised in Derwood, Montgomery County, and graduated in 1937 from Sherwood High School. During World War II, he served in the Army as a meat inspector. He was discharged in 1945 with the rank of staff sergeant. After the war, he enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, where he earned a bachelor's degree in animal husbandry in 1950.

Sunni Khalid is the senior reporter with WYPR's news department. The veteran journalist worked for numerous news organizations reporting throughout Africa, Europe, the Middle East, Asia and the Caribbean before coming to Baltimore to help create WYPR's news department. He lives in Joppatowne with his wife, Zeinab, a native of Kenya, and three children. "The Autobiography of Malcolm X" as told to Alex Haley This book literally changed my life. I read it when I was in my second year of college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.

Clem Florio, a former prize fighter and newspaper handicapper who was a fixture at Maryland race tracks for 40 years, died of pancreatic cancer Sunday at a Hollywood, Fla., hospice. He was 78. "He looked, spoke and acted like he stepped out of Guys and Dolls. He was Damon Runyon to the core," said Ross Peddicord of Frederick, The Sun's former racing writer. "Racing was his whole life, and he practically lived in the Pimlico, Laurel and Bowie press boxes." Born in Queens, N.Y., he grew up in Ozone Park near Aqueduct Raceway.

Robert Leo Blatchley, an attorney and former news reporter who was an accomplished Baltimore raconteur, died Thursday at Union Memorial Hospital of complications from earlier open-heart surgery. The Towson resident was 68. "He was a man who had nothing but friends," said former Maryland Attorney General J. Joseph Curran Jr. Born in Baltimore, Mr. Blatchley grew up on Whitridge Avenue and later Cator Avenue. In a 1994 Sun article, he recalled how his father, on leave from the Navy during World War II, roused him in the middle of the night to go see local history in the making: The nearby wood Oriole Park grandstands were burning in a spectacular fire along 29th Street.