Have you ever heard of the Baltimore Banner? Well, it just won the Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, and it’s, hopefully, part of a wave of new media outlets filling the gap as more established titles face serious financial strain and aggressive profit-maximization strategies pursued by private equity firms.
Baltimore sits about 45 minutes from Washington, D.C. It’s Maryland’s largest city and its principal print/text news outlet had always been the Baltimore Sun. Hotel magnate Stewart Bainum attempted to purchase The Sun in 2021 but was rebuffed. Instead, he pledged $50M and founded The Banner. Less than five years later, the newsroom has a Pulitzer. Bainum’s goal is to build the largest newsroom in Maryland – filling the void of a shrinking Sun and the diminution of local news in the neighboring Washington Post.
Out west in San Francisco, the San Francisco Standard launched in 2021 to bolster the Bay Area’s local news coverage and was joined in 2024 by the Gazetteer SF. The Bay Area, and San Francisco specifically, are proving to be an incubator for innovation in local news and a surprisingly resilient media market as the New York Times recently detailed.
Blattel Communications operates out of both the Baltimore/D.C. and Bay Area markets, serving clients nationwide. As such, we have a unique perch to watch these real time experiments in the news and how they impact our professional services clients’ coverage.
Joining The Banner in the D.C. Metro region is The 51st (for 51st state – fun fact: D.C. is more populous than Vermont and Wyoming! but not Canada) and Capitol Hill-focused Punchbowl News.
All of these outlets, while relatively new brands, feature many familiar journalists – drawn from other locally – an even nationally – recognized news outlets, major wire services and broadcast productions. Part of our challenge, as opportunity gatekeepers and stewards of our clients’ brands, is to vet and ensure that a nascent news outlet isn’t: a) a partisan astroturfing exercise; b) lacking journalistic standards; and c) worth the time in terms of a professional’s billable rate relative to the potential readership and impact. This is some of the “behind-the-scenes” infrastructure building we do in the agency’s Sourcing Bureau.
“Legacy Media” has become a partisan and derisive term. Traditional newspapers (where staff and standards still exist), news wires, broadcast and trade outlets remain valuable mediums for client coverage. Strong headwinds – such as intentions to defund NPR and pressure from corporate overlords on editorial content at 60 Minutes – are impacting many media staples.
Local news outlets finding success and garnering praise are welcome developments for professional services thought leaders. And, while we will likely see some storied names fade away, there is certain to be an upswelling of new titles to fill the void.