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Angela Leisure, whose son's killing by police sparked April riots, rose above her grief to become the icon of the city during a troubled time. For this, Cincinnati CityBeat names her 2001 Person of the Year. "At Cincinnati's defining moment in 2001, the world looked not to the city fathers for signs and hope but to a grieving woman whose poise and strength made her the closest we have to a mother of the city," writes Gregory Flannery.

Baltimore City Paper's Molly Rath, using juvenile justice documents not usually available to the public, digs deeper into why Maryland's juvenile justice system has failed the state's poor young men. While the dailies have used a lot of ink on stories about the problems with the system, none focused on those most affected, Rath says. “The more I talked to people inside, and critics outside, the system, the more I wanted to get away from them all and talk to kids, and the families,” Rath tells AAN News. Part Two of her Shackled series, nearly a year in the making, tells the story of a boy who entered the system at 11 and today, at 14, is still there, arguably worse off than when he entered.