Local News Bright Spots 2026

The Baltimore Banner

‘There’s no secret. It’s good journalism done well, done on time’

by Jennifer Kho

  • 21.1 million2.1 million monthly average page views
  • 85,000Paid subscribers to The Banner, up 19% year over year
  • +33.4%Revenue in 2025 vs. 2024 for The Banner
  • $27.3 millionRevenue reported in 2024

At a Glance

Founded
June 2022
Location
Baltimore
Organization Type
Local, digital-only nonprofit; also owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper
Ownership
Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, founded and funded by Stewart Bainum Jr.
Staff Size
260 total staff, with 100 journalists at the Banner and 60 at the Post-Gazette
Revenue Mix
50% revenue from digital subscriptions, 30% from philanthropy, 20% from advertising and events

Audrey Cooper was the editor-in-chief at WNYC in New York when she saw the news that Kimi Yoshino, founding editor of the Baltimore Banner, was heading to The Washington Post. She texted her congratulations to Yoshino, who responded, “You should move to Baltimore.”

She got the same message from Brian McGrory, editor of the Boston Globe and a board member for the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which owns the Banner. “That wasn’t on my bingo card for 2025,” Cooper said with a laugh.

But if the texts from Yoshino and McGrory hooked her, it was the scale of the Banner’s ambitions that reeled her in. One of the first pieces that caught her attention was about transit system issues that regularly kept thousands of fifth graders from getting to school on time. It was part of the “Missing the Bus” series that would ultimately be a Pulitzer Prize finalist for local reporting. “It was so ambitious,” Cooper said.

Then she met with Stewart Bainum Jr., the philanthropist whose $50 million pledge launched the Banner in 2022, who made it clear he wanted to expand beyond Baltimore. “What he believes is something that I very strongly believe too, which is [that] we are not going to save local journalism with small little experiments here and there,” she said. “You need to go big or go home.”

The Banner has a paywall – a rarity among nonprofit newsrooms, which usually make their content accessible for free. (The Daily Memphian is another example of a nonprofit with a paywall.) The Banner now has 85,000 paid subscribers, up from 72,000 when Cooper arrived in October. Subscriptions make up about half of its revenue, with philanthropy and advertising roughly splitting the other half. In 2024, The Ventoulis Institute for Local Journalism, owner of The Banner, reported revenue of $27.3 million on expenses of $28.8 million.

In May, the 95-journalist newsroom, which won the 2025 Pulitzer for local reporting for its opioid overdose investigation with The New York Times, expanded to Prince George’s County and acquired the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

Within two weeks of launching in Prince George’s County, the second richest majority-Black county in the U.S., the planning board chair had resigned and the sheriff’s spokesperson was placed on leave after Banner coverage about alleged corruption. “If nothing else shows you why we have to cure news deserts and expand local news, Prince George’s County is a great example of that,” Cooper said.

The 100-journalist Post-Gazette had been in danger of closing after a three-year strike that ended in November 2025. After the National Labor Relations Board found that the company had not bargained in good faith and after petitions and appeals failed, the newspaper’s owner, Block Communications, announced in January that it would close the Post-Gazette in May. Instead, it was acquired by The Banner’s owner, the Ventoulis Institute for Local Journalism, and Bainum and his wife, Sandy, committed an additional $30 million over five years.

Now the integration work, including data migration and newsroom culture reconciliation, is keeping everyone busy. Cooper is focused on the potential for digital growth at the Post-Gazette. In September, the Post-Gazette reached an all-time high of more than 60,000 paid digital subscriptions, according to Cat Harmon, director of executive communications and enterprise initiatives.

Meanwhile, The Banner is also experimenting with AI. It has built an AI system called News Detector, which surfaces stories from around the state to help the newsroom keep an eye on what’s happening around Maryland and also helps find stories from other outlets to include in their newsletters, Cooper said.

“This is the best kind of stress because it's just like we got a lot to do, and it's about how fast you can run,” Cooper said. “ I have the best job in journalism because we're getting to run fast and create things instead of what so many of our colleagues are doing right now, which is managing decline.”

This interview, conducted on Zoom, has been edited for length and clarity.

Career paths

Audrey Cooper discussing why she decided to move to Baltimore and head up the Banner

Ownership models

  • Jennifer Kho

    The Banner’s parent bought the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette in May. How did that come about?

    Jennifer Kho
  • Audrey Cooper

    They hired a consultant to evaluate more than 40 markets east of the Mississippi and look for other places where the Banner playbook could be expanded to. There were various conditions: It had to be a community that would embrace the local journalism we offered, and it would have to have the economic ingredients to be successful. The first recommendation was Pittsburgh. This was before the announcement by Block Communications that it was going to close the Post-Gazette.

    As soon as the whole world found out Block was going to close the Post-Gazette in May, it made a lot of sense for us. It was maybe a little bit faster than we might have gone otherwise, but it felt like fate. In the end there were two bidders: an investment fund with a long history of acquisitions, and scrappy little us, which hadn’t acquired anything before.

    Even though the Banner is a startup, our executive team has real breadth of experience. I brought some understanding of press runs and newspaper paging and things you just know from running a newspaper for a long time. We had a lot of experience on the financial, product and engineering ends. The thing we’re most proud of is that this organization would have ceased to exist unless somebody came forward. The Post-Gazette literally started before George Washington was president. That is a major responsibility that we all feel very deeply.

    Audrey Cooper

Digital transformation

  • Jennifer Kho

    What’s next for the Post-Gazette?

    Jennifer Kho
Audrey Cooper discusses what’s next for the Post-Gazette.

Ownership

  • Jennifer Kho

    What has it been like for a four-year-old digital company to absorb a legacy newspaper?

    Jennifer Kho
  • Audrey Cooper

    Every media company you go to has a vastly different culture, and that’s true of the Banner and the Post-Gazette. We have a really great culture at the Banner; a ton of credit goes to Kimi and the founding team. How do you spread a great culture to a place where these journalists didn’t think they were going to have jobs and kept showing up to work anyway? That’s a great culture, too, but it’s a different one. They had the longest newspaper strike in modern history, and then they all thought they were going to close. Caring for that culture while you’re asking them to go along with another period of uncertainty, until we fully integrate operations, takes being purposeful about what you prioritize.

    Here’s a good example of a difference. Block Communications was a privately owned company, so financial information was not readily available. Ours are in our 990s, and they’re out there. I always tell people there’s no secret bag of money we’re hiding. We’re a nonprofit, so we’ll tell you how the company is performing, what we’re spending, how many subscribers we have. At the Banner, all of our subscriber numbers are on a constantly moving screen in the middle of the newsroom. That wasn’t the case at the Post-Gazette. There’s a level of transparency that’s different, and that’s not good or bad; it’s just very different. And Block was a multinational company. It’s just us. Our CEO is super accessible, and I’m super accessible to them.

    I don’t know that anything has necessarily surprised me, except how long it takes to move things onto a new company. I’ll have to get you the exact numbers, but the amount of data the Banner has is [2 terabytes]; we’re only four years old. The Post-Gazette [has 107 terabytes]. So there’s the physical act of what you import over, what you can change and what you shouldn’t change. There are a million day-to-day decisions like that. Nobody wants to hear me talk about migration; this is not why I went to journalism school. But it’s so important, and you can’t mess it up, because you’re talking about publishing reliability and the very foundation of the business.

    Audrey Cooper

Expansion & news deserts

  • Jennifer Kho

    The Banner also launched coverage in Montgomery and Prince George’s counties. How are you managing so much expansion at once?

    Jennifer Kho
  • Audrey Cooper

    I said to one of the editors the other day that I was driving home and thought, man, I’m stressed, I’ve got so much to do. But it was a stress you’re excited about, instead of a stress where you think, I don’t know if I can do this, or if it’s going to work. This is the best kind of stress, because we have a lot to do and it’s about how fast you can run.

    I have the best job in journalism, because we’re getting to run fast and create things, instead of what so many of our colleagues are doing right now, which is managing decline.

    Audrey Cooper

Community engagement

  • Jennifer Kho

    What are the key factors to the Banner’s success?

    Jennifer Kho
  • Audrey Cooper

    It all starts with culture and then being ambitious – and it’s journalism too. We have the best data team of any news organization of our size. That is why we’ve won a Pulitzer and why we’ve been a finalist, back to back.

    Another thing that’s really unique about the Banner is the community support. If you go on our Instagram, you might see one or two people say, “Oh, you guys suck,” and then that person has a pile-on of Banner fans telling them to sit down. That’s because we are very intentional about community events and community listening sessions. I have one on Wednesday; there was one last week. Every conversation you have with a Banner person, whether it’s Stewart all the way down to the business side or a reporter, will end with: What do you think we need to be doing differently? How can we be better? It’s said with an intention I haven’t seen anywhere else, and we act on it. (This story came out of one of our listening sessions!)

    In terms of measurable things, we have newsroom goals. I’m a big believer that you can’t reach great heights unless you say how high you want to get. One of our goals is that everybody on staff is expected to do something innovative in the year. Inevitably, people say, “Well, what is an innovation?” And I say, I don’t know, because if it was innovative, I wouldn’t have already come up with the idea. Giving people permission and an instruction — this is part of your job, go do something crazy — and then permission to fail, is ingrained in the Banner.

    Audrey Cooper

Social media & video

  • Jennifer Kho

    What are some of the things that have worked best?

    Jennifer Kho
  • Audrey Cooper

    Our social video program is excellent. … Our marketing is pretty great. And our data reporting is pretty great. Whenever we come up with a major project, the question is not just how do we make this story good, but where can we drive it further?

    Audrey Cooper
Audrey discusses the Banner’s social video and marketing

Coverage

  • Jennifer Kho

    What kinds of content have resonated most in Baltimore?

    Jennifer Kho

Leadership & operations

  • Jennifer Kho

    What do you know now that you wish you’d known nine months ago?

    Jennifer Kho
  • Audrey Cooper

    What I have figured out is that nothing makes up for a good business plan and having the trust of your community. They will give you a lot of leeway to figure it out after that.

    It’s also interesting to have a startup and a legacy business, because they’re in very different places in terms of planning sophistication. At a newspaper, you plan things out days and days ahead of time. At the Banner, we’re not used to doing that as much. I’m a big believer that an editor’s job is ultimately to set up the scaffolding for people to make the best decisions they can, and to put in place systems that allow everybody to do their best work. That’s true at a legacy publication, and it’s true at a new startup.

    Audrey Cooper

Paywall

  • Jennifer Kho

    The Banner is a nonprofit with digital subscriptions, advertising and philanthropy. Tell us about the revenue mix and how it all works together.

    Jennifer Kho
  • Audrey Cooper

    I’ve worked in for-profit private companies and nonprofit public media, and there are pros and cons of each. Our business model blends the best principles of each. If you are not looking at your subscription numbers every day, you tend not to become a very audience-centric newsroom. That has been my very strong experience.

    When we do something that actually drives numbers, the newsroom gets excited about it. Driving that success means we will have more money to put into journalism. It’s the best of all worlds. We’re always a little humbled and bewildered [when asked about the model], because I don’t know that we think we’re reinventing the wheel. We are, maybe, only insofar as not very many nonprofits also have a subscription model.

    A lot of funders don’t agree with that, but they’re coming around. It’s not unlike the symphony, the opera, community theater, or anything else you would buy a ticket to. Those places may balance their books on donors and philanthropists, but you still have to sell a ticket. The same is true of our model, and it’s one I look forward to proving it works to the rest of the country.

    Audrey Cooper
  • Jennifer Kho

    How does the Post-Gazette acquisition change the picture and the plan?

    Jennifer Kho

AI

  • Jennifer Kho

    In a rapidly shifting news landscape, what changes have affected you most and how are you responding?

    Jennifer Kho
  • Audrey Cooper

    It’s always been hard to be in local news. Whenever I hear people say it would have been great to be in news before the internet, I say, “Yeah, but I wouldn’t have gotten a job in that newsroom.”

    There’s no point in living in the past. If we just do our best work, do it with intention, do it with a focus on community, and treat our colleagues with respect and care, which we haven’t always done in journalism, it’s amazing how far ahead you get just by doing best practice well.

    Everybody wants to know the secret. There’s no secret. It’s good journalism, done well, done on time, with people who are responsible, ethical journalists, and treating them really well.

    Like everybody, we’ve seen an AI hit to our Google search [traffic]. I don’t think the world’s coming to an end. People will come to you if you’re giving them something they want to read and want to know about. I just have to believe that, and our data on a daily basis shows it.

    What’s interesting about AI, and the thing I do worry about, is whether newsrooms are able to have reasonable conversations about it without people retreating to their corners. Not so much how do we use it, because we all have ethics policies – and a lot of these are ethical issues, not technological ones – and as an industry we do a pretty good job of ethically policing ourselves. The more interesting question is whether we can even have those conversations and experiment.

    Audrey Cooper

This interview is part of the State of Local News Report’s Bright Spots section, which highlights innovative local news outlets around the United States. These outlets offer lessons for others aiming to fill news gaps, grow audiences and community impact, and achieve financial sustainability. As local news deserts continue to spread, our hope is that others will be inspired by these stories so we can all make progress together. Find the complete list of 2026 Bright Spots here.

About the author

Jennifer Kho

Bright Spots editor

Jennifer Kho is a fractional leader, researcher and consultant specializing in newsroom innovation and transformation. She was most recently the executive editor of the Chicago Sun-Times. She previously served as managing editor and senior director of strategic innovation for HuffPost; managing editor for the Guardian US; and president of the Journalism & Women Symposium (JAWS).

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