Stewart W. Bainum Jr., the wealthy donor backing The Baltimore Banner, has been Chairman of Choice Hotels International since 1997 and has overseen its growth into a global enterprise with thousands of hotels in more than 40 countries.
Bainum previously served as chairman and CEO of Manor Care from 1987 to 1998 and founded two other assisted-living companies. He was a delegate and a senator in the Maryland General Assembly from 1979 to 1987.
He became known as a media investor in 2021 when he tried to buy Tribune Publishing, which owned The Baltimore Sun. Hedge-fund Alden Global Capital won the bidding for the newspaper chain last summer, and, within months, Bainum disclosed his plans for The Baltimore Banner.
Following is an edited transcript of an interview with Greg Burns of the Medill Local News Initiative on March 17.
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Greg Burns What is The Baltimore Banner’s mission?
Greg Burns -
Stewart Bainum The overall mission is to make life better for the people of Baltimore, especially those who have been ignored. The local goal is pretty obvious: to create a news outlet that strengthens the community, that tells the stories of the people of Baltimore and holds our leaders to account. Secondly is the national goal: to do that in a financially sustainable way, at scale, so it can be replicated by others in communities in all 50 states, as a public good.
Stewart Bainum -
Greg Burns Is for-profit local journalism dying out?
Greg Burns -
Stewart Bainum Local for-profit journalism is a challenge because investors want a return on their equity investment. I don't have a vision for how you can get a return on your capital if you're for-profit. I would guess that will change over time. I have no idea when or how, but hopefully it will, because the upside is tremendous for the country and for our democracy.
Stewart Bainum -
Greg Burns Do you think legacy news organizations are running out of time to go all-digital?
Greg Burns -
Stewart Bainum I do, because the secular trend is a decrease in print subscriptions and advertising revenue of probably around 15 to 20 percent a year, depending on the market. When we couldn't find any sustainable business model for online local news, we said maybe there's a way to buy a legacy paper and over three or four years, while the print advertising and print subscriptions lasted, to convert it to a digital-first operation. No, the secular trends in this industry are so difficult and challenging.
Stewart Bainum -
Greg Burns Why aren't more wealthy benefactors stepping up to invest in the local news business as you are?
Greg Burns -
Stewart Bainum People are [reluctant] to invest, and foundations are [reluctant] to invest because the risk is so great to their capital. There are people out there with means that want to do this, but we just haven't been able to find a way of doing it, up til now. That is one of the things exciting to us about this opportunity, because if we can come up with a map, a lot of great people around the country will back it in their communities. We all need to do what we can to help a community understand what's going on. How can people govern themselves when they don't know what's going on?
Stewart Bainum