Event is 11th annual contest to select
area’s best Voice of Baltimore singer,
to benefit Ed Block Courage Awards
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
Wearing cutoff Daisy Dukes and gyrating like an ecdysiast, song contestant Holly Walter electrified a large gathering at Padonia Station Monday night as the 2012 installment of the Lutherville nightclub and sports bar’s “Voice of Baltimore” singing contest entered its third consecutive week.

Formerly known as the “Baltimore Idol,” the competition, to benefit the Ed Block Courage Awards, is in its eleventh year, newly designated “Voice of Baltimore” as a result of objections from Fox Television’s “Idol” franchise, which inexplicably expressed concerns with the local event’s popularity.

Eight contestants — amateur performers all, though easily as good as anyone professional — entertained a packed house, vying for a chance to be named this year’s “Voice of Baltimore” and walk off with $500 cash, a 10-hour recording session and a seven-day all-expenses-paid trip to Ocean City.

And… the opportunity to sing the National Anthem at a Baltimore Orioles baseball game this summer at Camden Yards.

Photojournalist Bill Hughes chronicled the event for VoB.

The winner’s recording session will take place courtesy of Sheffield Audio-Video Productions’ Sheffield Institute for the Recording Artists, located in Phoenix, Md., and the week in O.C. is being provided by 1st Class Travel. Both are co-sponsors of the 11th Annual Voice of Baltimore Competition, along with Major League Baseball’s Baltimore Orioles and Pabst Blue Ribbon Brewing Co., distributors of National Bohemian Beer, a/k/a Natty Boh.

Second prize is $300; third prize is $200.

Patrons of the popular Lutherville nightclub/sports bar can enjoy a Natty Boh on draft for just $2 for the duration of the competition.

Voice of Baltimore, the website, is proud to have its name associated with such an exemplary event. The Ed Block Courage Award Foundation is dedicated to improving the lives of abused, neglected and at-risk children and ending the cycle of abuse, and to raise awareness and prevention of child abuse.

Investigative Producer Stephen Janis  is first
to win Emmy and MDDC investigative award
 
Baltimore television station WBFF-Fox45-TV won eight Emmy Awards, leading all other Maryland outlets, as regional Emmys were presented Saturday night at the Newseum in Washington, D.C.

The area’s three major-network TV outlets — WBAL-Channel11, WJZ-Channel13, and WMAR-Channel2 — each won one Emmy apiece.

Leading the Fox News team was Melinda Roeder, who won two Emmys, one for general assignment reporting, the other in concert with Investigative Producer Stephen Janis, whose three-part “Controversial State Center Development” series Emmy was also shared by Photographer Paul McGrew.

Janis joined Fox45 in 2011 after founding and reporting for Investigative Voice, the precursor of Voice of Baltimore, which was named Baltimore’s Best Online News Source by Baltimore Magazine in 2010.

He is the first to win a regional Emmy as well as a Maryland-Delaware-District of Columbia (MDDC) Press Association Award for investigative reporting.

The station’s David Larson was named Best Photographer of the Year for his video essay, “We Have Not Forgotten.”

Other WBFF Emmys went to anchor Jennifer Gilbert for arts and entertainment, and Kathleen Cairns for her sports news feature, “Madame Butterfly.”

Additional Baltimore outlets to win Emmys were Maryland Public Television, which won six, while MASN and Comcast SportsNet garnered five apiece.

WBAL-Radio host Ron Smith, who died of pancreatic cancer in December, was named posthumously as recipient of the Ted Yates Award. (Yates was an NBC reporter who was killed in Jerusalem when the Six-Day War broke out in 1967 and his camera crew came under fire.)

WAS 4-5 MORNING LINE FAVORITE EARLY FRI.
 
By Alan Z. Forman
 
I’ll Have Another won’t have another victory:  The Preakness and Kentucky Derby come-from-behind winner has been scratched from Saturday’s 144th Belmont Stakes at Elmont, N.Y., ending what may have been Thoroughbred racing’s best bet for a Triple Crown since Affirmed last accomplished the feat on June 10, 1978.

A victim of tendinitis, the fast-finishing winner of the first two Triple Crown jewels will not race again but will be retired by his owners and trainer rather than risk breaking down or pulling up lame as a result of his swollen left front tendon.

Track insiders however said there was a more insidious reason for his being scratched, and also retired.

He is expected to command millions of dollars in stud fees and could fetch as much as $7-$9 million as a stallion prospect. His value at stud would have been twice that had he won the Triple Crown.

But instead of becoming the twelfth Triple Crown winner the three-year-old thus becomes the twelfth horse since Affirmed to win the Kentucky Derby and Preakness but not the Belmont. He is only the third horse to have won the Derby and Preakness yet fail to make it to the Belmont post.

Trainer Doug O’Neill told the Associated Press late Friday that I’ll Have Another had developed swelling in his left foreleg that was the beginning of tendinitis, dashing Thoroughbred racing’s hopes for a Triple Crown champion to help resurrect the struggling horserace industry.

O’Neill himself has been under a cloud. Nicknamed “Drug” O’Neill because of numerous medication and drug-related infractions, he recently received a 45-day suspension for giving one of his horses an illegal performance enhancing mixture, a penalty that will not take effect until after the Belmont.

Animal rights activists — notably PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) — have been highly critical of the racing industry, not just for overmedicating horses but for breeding them for speed at the expense of fragile legs unable in many cases to bear the horse’s weight and prone to breakage leading to death.

With Fire Chief James S. Clack on the hot seat in the council chambers, Bernard C. “Jack” Young termed the mayor’s planned closings “unacceptable to me,” adding, “I want to know why you as the fire chief are not defending your budget, you’re the fire chief.”

Clack countered, saying he does his job but not “in public” and not “in front of the media,” as Fox45’s TV cameras rolled.

Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake’s proposed budget for the fiscal year beginning July 1 closes a $48 million shortfall, but it won’t prevent the closure of three city fire companies, the television station reported.

According to the Baltimore Sun, the mayor is terming Young’s budget proposals “unadvisable, unworkable and irresponsible” and has said she “cannot support them.”

In a letter to council members in which she criticized Young for various recommendations she considers fiscally irresponsible, Blake said the $4.8 million in cuts proposed by the council president to the city’s $2.3 billion operating budget would result in the elimination of key programs and nearly two dozen layoffs.

“I encourage the Council to act responsibly and reject any actions in their furtherance,” the mayor declared.

Said Young with regard to the mayor and her advisers: “They can find the money [to keep the fire stations open]. They find it for everything else, they can find it for the Fire Department.”