This Is One Way to Save Local News
Local news is on life support in the U.S. Since 2005, more than 3,200 print newspapers have closed or merged. That is a staggering number.
But different business models have sprung up to fill that gap, including digital-only and nonprofit ventures like a startup media company in Maryland’s largest city, the Baltimore Banner.
How are communities affected when local events simply never become stories? How does removing the profit motive change the way news is produced, and what’s it like competing with a nearly 200-year-old incumbent?
Camber Creek’s Head of Platform, Lionel Foster, put those questions to Julie Scharper, an enterprise reporter for the Banner.
The transcript has been edited for clarity.
Lionel Foster: Julie, welcome to Catalyst. Thanks for joining.
Julie Scharper: Thank you, Lionel. Happy to be here.
Lionel Foster: Yeah, so we go way back but don’t keep in touch as much as we should. We went to college together.
Julie Scharper: Yeah.
Lionel Foster: I just want to instinctively blame you, but I’m sure it’s my fault as well. But now we’re going to have perhaps the longest conversation we’ve had in years, and I want to start by indicating that you are, of course, speaking in your own capacity.
We’re going to talk about the Banner, the kinds of newsroom and news business model innovations it and other organizations represent. But of course, you’re not necessarily speaking for the Banner. You are Julie Scharper, a journalist with a lot of experience.
Julie Scharper: Yeah, exactly.
Lionel Foster: All right, fantastic. So let me go back in the day. You and I went to Johns Hopkins University together. I was actually in the creative writing program. What did you study, and did you know back then that you wanted to be a journalist?
Julie Scharper: I had no idea that I wanted to be a journalist when I was in college. But in retrospect, so many of the things that I did in college were fantastic preparation for becoming a journalist.
I was actually a psychology major, because I was really interested in how people think and what makes people the way they are. I volunteered with the peer counseling organization on campus. I think it was called A Place to Talk. Through that, I learned a lot about active listening and encouraging people to talk, making people feel comfortable and not being judgmental, which were foundational skills for being a reporter.
I was also interested in all sorts of different classes and would go on these intense phases of being absolutely obsessed with something that I was learning. For example, I took a class in the evolution of prehistoric mammals, and I wound up working for the professor’s lab and doing a two-week paleontology dig out west in the Badlands of Wyoming.
Then I kind of did that and moved on to something else.
At the time I was like, what’s my problem? Why am I always obsessed with something and then I move on to another interest? But it turns out that’s actually a great skill set for a journalist to have, a series of intense but short-lived, obsessive interests.
I was also the co-president of the Hopkins LGBTQ organization. At the time, we had this tremendous budget, and we were able to bring in incredible speakers. We had bell hooks come my senior year of college, Leslie Feinberg, and less famous people like Dan Savage or Alison Bechdel. I got to pick these people up from the airport in the Hopkins van, which I drove very poorly.
Then I would take them out to dinner with other members from the organization, and that whole process made me not afraid to talk to very important, rightly famous people, which is also a good skill to have.
And then finally, I was a creative writing minor. I mostly wrote poetry, so that was helpful too.
Lionel Foster: So Julie, I know from experience you are very smart and very kind. When I think about you engaging with people and getting them to open up, you have great bedside manner.
And you’re kind of like a pocket-sized human, so I wonder if that puts people at ease or maybe even makes them underestimate you at times.
Julie Scharper: Yes, I think both of those things are true, especially when I was younger.
I remember when I was an intern at the Sun. But I was in grad school, so I wasn’t that young, probably 27 or 28. I interviewed Reverend Jesse Jackson.
I was covering something in Congress and introduced myself and said, “Hi, I’m Julie Scharper from the Baltimore Sun.”
And he just reached out, put his arm around me, and kissed me on top of the head. I was mortified. But yes, that definitely happened to me. I’ve outgrown some of that now.
Lionel Foster: That is amazing. And I imagine, given that Reverend Jesse Jackson just passed away within the past week or so, you’ve maybe been sharing that story a little more frequently.
Julie Scharper: I’ve been telling that story. And I do think the flip side is true.
Especially with my background in psychology, I think I’m good at making people feel comfortable and accepted. A lot of the reporting I’ve done at the Banner has been investigations involving allegations of sexual abuse or harassment. The most important thing is to build rapport and trust with people. So I might not be the loudest or most aggressive person in the room, and I’ve certainly never been the tallest person in the room unless I’m with a class of kindergartners. But I do feel like I have a skill set that is really useful for a journalist.
Lionel Foster: Yeah, you make it work. What is the Baltimore Banner?
Julie Scharper: This is one of my favorite questions to answer. The Baltimore Banner is a nonprofit newsroom.
We are headquartered in Baltimore and started in Baltimore in 2022, but in the last year we’ve expanded into Montgomery County and Prince George’s County. We’re also about to launch coverage of Washington, DC sports teams. So we’re becoming a little more regional. We have a Baltimore center of gravity and a DMV center of gravity.
Unlike most traditional newspapers, we are digital-only. Many people don’t recognize the immense costs involved in printing and distributing a newspaper: the ink, paper, distribution network, and printing process. Being digital-only allows us to cut those costs.
And being a nonprofit means we’re working toward sustainability, not profit. We don’t have to appease shareholders. When we get more money, we can hire more staff and do more work, but we’re not under constant financial pressure to generate returns. We can focus on delivering the best possible journalism.
Lionel Foster: You were at the Baltimore Sun for quite a while, and you and I overlapped there briefly. Certainly early on, the Banner was compared against the Sun. You’ve worked at both places. Are there big differences?
Julie Scharper: Absolutely immense differences. The Banner comes from a startup culture, so we’re not afraid to try new things. If something doesn’t work, we pivot. We don’t have the baggage of being a nearly 200-year-old institution. We’re able to experiment.
We also focus on being representative of the communities we cover in terms of staff backgrounds. It’s a very positive and encouraging place.
There’s a lot of mentorship, a lot of warmth, and people celebrate each other’s successes. That kind of environment allows people to do their best work because they’re not constantly in fight-or-flight mode.
Lionel Foster: One stereotype of a US newsroom is that it’s a pressure cooker—people running around, shouting across an open bullpen.
Is that still true?
Julie Scharper: Yes, it’s intense.
It’s helpful to have a supportive newsroom, because so much of what we do in the field is emotionally intense. Whether it’s pressing public officials for answers or talking to victims or traumatized individuals, or dealing with negative feedback from readers. It can be a lot. So it really helps when the newsroom itself feels warm and supportive.
Lionel Foster: You’re describing a physical newsroom environment. A lot of companies are still figuring out hybrid work. Where has the Banner landed, and what are your preferences?
Julie Scharper: I’d say we embrace the hybrid model. We’re encouraged to be in the newsroom three or four days a week, but it’s also fine to work from home as needed.
For me, that’s really helpful because when I write—this is a little embarrassing—but when I write, I usually talk to myself. I sort of say the phrases out loud as I’m writing them.
I can just act weird, you know, like staring off into space, and it almost feels like this private thing for me. So if I am writing in the newsroom, I usually try to find a little private room somewhere to work in.
But now that our newsroom has really grown, we have like a hundred reporters, editors, and photographers at this point. Plus we have the whole business side: marketing, advertising, and philanthropy. So we’ve got about 130 or 140 staff members altogether.
When I started, it was very small, and now it feels very crowded. So if I’m doing something intense like writing, I usually work from home. But I love being in the newsroom, because it’s a great way to exchange ideas. I’m always collaborating with colleagues.
Because I’m from Baltimore and have lived most of my life here, and we’ve attracted journalists from all over the country, I often find myself explaining the history of something or talking about events I covered 20 years ago. So there’s a lot of collaboration. We have a lot of brown bag lunches, we have guest speakers come in.
There are a lot of opportunities to be educated in the newsroom too.
Lionel Foster: You described quite a bustling and large operation at this point. That’s a lot of growth over a few years. Financially, how is that possible? And I know you don’t work on the business side. You might have limited insight into the balance sheet. But where’s the money coming from?
Julie Scharper: Well, it comes from a lot of different buckets. We have many streams of revenue.
I can’t talk about the Banner’s origin story without talking about Stewart Bainum, who is a philanthropist, who pledged $50 million to get the Banner off the ground. And that runway goes for five or six years. That’s been immensely helpful and has really set us apart from many other startup newsrooms or nonprofit newsrooms in the country.
We also have a really robust and incredibly talented philanthropy team that is constantly bringing in donations from philanthropists, large and small, national organizations, and local donors.
We also bring in a lot of money through subscription revenue. That has really grown over time. We have individual subscribers and institutional subscribers, and we’re constantly experimenting with different models for those subscriptions. That’s a really important part of our revenue.
We also bring in, I would say, less revenue from advertising, which of course had traditionally been the major source of revenue for news sites. And also through events. We have a team that plans symposia and all sorts of discussions and gatherings, and that’s also a stream of revenue for us.
Lionel Foster: You used the plural of the word symposium, which I applaud you for. Obviously that’s quality education.
Julie Scharper: It’s that Hopkins education.
Lionel Foster: All right, so lots going on at the Banner and then lots going on in your head, in your beat. What is an enterprise reporter?
Julie Scharper: It is funny. When I say that to people, they often assume that means I cover business. And then I like to make a Star Trek joke. But “enterprise” means that I find stories through my own hustle. So I don’t have one dedicated beat. I just kind of always hop around.
Going back to my days at Hopkins, where I studied history, and women’s studies, and biology, and all sorts of different things, I now have the opportunity to write about a wide variety of topics.
I’m also available when bigger stories arise and they need to bring in additional reporters.
Like I said, I love doing investigative work, but also, if there’s a big news story, say, for example, when Luigi Mangione was arrested, and we discovered that he had a local connection. He’s a Baltimore County boy. Then I was one of the reporters who worked on stories about that as well.
Lionel Foster: And of course, Mangione was accused of killing a UnitedHealthcare executive.
Julie Scharper: Yes, exactly.
We often say that every big story has a Baltimore connection. So when he was arrested, it was like, oh my gosh. What are the odds that he would be from the Baltimore area?
Lionel Foster: So your beat is more or less what you can make it, or feel inclined to make it, any given week or month. That’s a lot of responsibility, and my understanding is you kind of have to earn your way into that kind of leeway. There’s probably no such thing as a junior enterprise reporter. Is that right?
Julie Scharper: I think a lot of times when reporters start, they’re on a breaking news beat, so they’re sent off to cover whatever the news of the day is, which is great experience. Then, as you spend more time in journalism, you usually move into having a beat.
For me, at the Baltimore Sun, the beat I was on the longest was City Hall. I spent four years covering City Hall, which was very intense and a tremendous amount of work. But I also learned a lot of skills, not only developing sources, finding documents, and chasing down leads, but also emotional resilience. Because it was really brutal.
Lionel Foster: What made it brutal?
Julie Scharper: It was a tough and cutthroat environment. The spokesperson for the mayor that I covered was incredibly intense.
One time, there was a story I wrote that he didn’t like. It was accurate, but he didn’t like it. There’s a meeting every Wednesday called the Board of Estimates that all the journalists attend, along with dozens of city officials. He printed the front page of the Baltimore Sun with my story, crossed out the headline, wrote “wrong,” and passed it out to everyone who walked into the meeting.
The story was correct. No correction was needed. But it was just a very cutthroat environment. I would get long rants in my voicemail full of profanity.
People were angry all the time. Every story I wrote would have at least one person upset about it.
Lionel Foster: And some of the people doing the ranting, were they public officials? Not just members of the public?
Julie Scharper: Yeah. They were generally government employees.
Lionel Foster: It’s always been interesting to me that what you see printed is often a sanitized version of what’s actually happening. Some of that intense reaction, why doesn’t more of that make it into the story? Because I think it would be informative.
Julie Scharper: I understand what you’re saying. Part of it is that people will often be that candid when they’re off the record. Another part is that we’re only able to print things we can verify. If a fact appears in a news story, it should be corroborated in multiple ways. A lot of the time, what people are saying are opinions, not verifiable facts.
So they don’t make it into print. But it’s true. A story is often just the tip of the iceberg of what we know.
Lionel Foster: In sports media, there’s something called the notebook dump, when a major event happens and reporters finally share all the details they’ve been sitting on. Even then, I often think, it would have been interesting to hear some of this earlier. But I respect that you have standards and are holding to them.
Julie Scharper: Yeah, I understand what you’re saying too. There are times when I think we could push the envelope a bit more. But it’s also a question of voice and style, and maintaining a certain level of polish in the articles.
Lionel Foster: Do you think that polish still matters? I think that’s an outdated concept for some people. It’s funny. People have this distinction between old media versus new media. Technically, the Banner fits in the new media category. You described yourselves as a startup. You’re digital-first and digital-only. But those sound like old media values to me. So how do you parse that?
Julie Scharper: I think at the Banner we walk a fine line between old media and new media. We’re looking to bring a level of gravitas or authority to our coverage that you would expect from old media while also having the freshness and creativity of new media.
But for me personally, I believe things should be clean and neat and tidy and well structured. I hate grammatical errors. I’m always looking through my colleagues’ writing and saying, “Hey, do you know that’s a dangling modifier? Would you like me to explain what a dangling modifier is?” My mom was an English professor.
And I think our readers are paying to be Baltimore Banner subscribers, and they deserve a really high-quality product because of that.
Lionel Foster: You talked about the character of the Banner and the standards that are really important to you. You used to work at the Baltimore Sun, which has been a big name in Maryland and beyond for literally over a century. What are some of the differences between the two? And specifically, can you think of a story that you ran or were part of at the Banner that just wouldn’t have happened at the Sun?
Julie Scharper: Absolutely. I think the perfect example is the Justin Tucker investigation that we worked on last year. That story had actually arrived at the Baltimore Sun in 2015 or 2016. I was not there at the time. I had about seven years where I was home with little kids, and freelancing, and doing consulting.
Lionel Foster: Just to catch people up, Justin Tucker was a kicker for the Baltimore Ravens, the local NFL team, who was accused of sexual misconduct by a number of women.
Julie Scharper: Yes. A number of massage therapists said that he acted in an inappropriate sexual way with them during massage appointments. One massage therapist had actually contacted the Baltimore Sun in 2015 or 2016. I wasn’t at the Sun at the time, so I’m not privy to all the internal discussions, but I have spoken to this massage therapist, and the Sun really wasn’t able to go forward with that story.
For us at the Banner, we got a tip last January, January of 2025. Some reporters started looking up “Justin Tucker” and “massage” on social media and found a number of posts on X referencing these allegations, really rumors at that time.
I think other news organizations and the Sun might have been a little afraid to pursue that. Our editors said, “See what you can chase down.”
So I started messaging some of the people who had put up those posts, and one of them messaged me back right away and said, “This is based on something that a high school classmate of mine posted on Facebook a couple years ago.”
He sent me to that Facebook post. I contacted the woman who had written it, and she wound up being the first massage therapist we spoke to. She helped me connect with others, and it became this sort of investigative web.
I worked on it with two colleagues, Brenna Smith, who has since gone to the Wall Street Journal, and Justin Fenton, who is a legendary Baltimore investigative reporter, plus a host of editors and Ravens reporters.
We were doing things like going through LinkedIn and saying, “Okay, we know it’s someone who worked at this spa from this time to this time, and someone said her name started with M,” and then trying to figure out who that person was and cold-calling them. It was remarkable how open these women were to hearing from us. We were able to persuade many of them to share their stories.
One notable thing about that story is that we did not name the massage therapists. They all asked for anonymity. That was in part because of a similar case involving Deshaun Watson, where women came forward publicly and received hate mail and even death threats. The women we spoke to were aware of that and were afraid of having that same level of exposure. Many had small children.
So we worked closely with our editors and legal team to develop a threshold for corroboration so that we felt these accounts were very well verified before publishing. We also worked with the massage therapists to get their consent that, if the Banner faced legal action, they would testify in court.
So even though they were anonymous in the story, they were willing to stand behind their accounts. That’s very tricky reporting, and it’s not something I think the Sun would have done, at least not when I was there.
Lionel Foster: That’s interesting, because logistically there’s no reason the Sun couldn’t have done the same things. What do you think held them back?
Julie Scharper: That’s a really interesting question.
Again, I wasn’t privy to those internal discussions, but I will say that while I was there, there was some hesitation around investigative stories.
They require a huge time commitment from reporters and editors. You have to allow reporters the time to pursue an investigation. They can’t be churning out daily stories at the same time.
There’s also the importance of working closely with media law attorneys, which really empowers us to do more, because we feel confident our reporting is legally sound.
Lionel Foster: I was thinking about the legal piece as well, because that can be scary, especially for a startup. It sounds like you had the funding to hire lawyers and the conviction to keep going. That’s a little surprising to me.
Julie Scharper: I can’t even begin to describe how intense it was. Tucker hired a very well known media law firm, Claire Locke, to represent him. We had reached out to Tucker and the Ravens and given them time to respond, about 48 hours.
They asked for more time, and it turned out they were using that time to hire Claire Locke and prepare a six-page letter threatening to sue the Banner. It was very intense. It was especially intense for me because my husband is the sports editor, so we were both involved in the story.
There was a lot of pressure. If we got something wrong, we could have put the institution at risk, and it would reflect on both of our careers. But because we were working closely with our legal team and editors, they ultimately gave me a pep talk.
I remember having intense anxiety before publication. I couldn’t sleep. But they told me, “You’ve crossed every T and dotted every I. We are confident in this story. Let’s go ahead.” And it was incredibly validating.
A few months later, the NFL conducted its own investigation based on our reporting. They didn’t publicly release the findings, but they acknowledged that Tucker had violated their personal conduct policy and suspended him for 11 games. The Ravens released him. So it felt very vindicating. It confirmed that we had made the right call.
But it was scary.
Lionel Foster: Wow. Kudos to you for sticking with it. That’s a significant example of impact.
Baltimore still has multiple publications, but nationwide, since 2005, about 3,200 newspapers have closed or merged. That sounds staggering, but I don’t have a granular feel for what that looks like on the ground.
Do you have any insight into what happens to communities when they lose local journalism?
Julie Scharper: Absolutely.
When journalists are not paying attention to what happens in a town, it creates opportunities for corruption or malfeasance because no one is watching. Journalists sift through boring documents, file FOIA requests, and comb through records with a fine-tooth comb.
We all recognize the value of that nationally, but it’s incredibly important at the local level too. One thing I’ve really noticed at the Banner is that the Sun had pulled back from covering Baltimore County over the years. When I started at the Sun, we had a staff of 12 in a dedicated Baltimore County bureau. Over time, that bureau closed, and coverage shrank.
The Sun also acquired smaller community papers, and others went out of print. At the Banner, as we’ve increased our Baltimore County staff—we now have multiple dedicated reporters—we’re uncovering a huge number of stories.
Concerns about local government, council members not attending meetings, and many complicated issues that would not have been uncovered without coverage.
Lionel Foster: Wow. So you’re talking about a certain capability that an entire community, whether a city or a town, has when there’s a local paper and stories emerge.
I’m thinking about a different type of capability. A lot of industries are having to contend with artificial intelligence tools and even the prospect that AI could eliminate jobs.
In your view, is there any room for AI in the newsroom, and are you already using AI tools?
Julie Scharper: Well, this is certainly one of those topics where my opinions are not the same as the official opinions of the Banner.
AI really gives me the heebie-jeebies on multiple levels, and I have been loath to embrace it. But the Banner does have a staff member who focuses on AI. We have an AI task force.
Obviously, we’re never going to use AI for newsgathering. We’re never going to use it for reporting or writing. But there are ways to use AI to expedite certain processes, and that is what the Banner is looking into and engaged with.
Lionel Foster: So it’s interesting. In terms of national reputation and the size of that reputation, I feel like the good news is that Baltimore punches above its weight.
The bad news is that the viewpoints are not always flattering. We went to college together. Johns Hopkins University is in Baltimore, and both of us are from Baltimore. There was a period before The Wire and shortly after it aired when I got the sense that people were trying to put me in a position of having to defend Baltimore or validate their negative viewpoints. Sure, it has downsides and warts, but it has lots of upsides as well. The people tend to be really honest and frank, but also warm. So you have a bit of the frankness of, say, New York, but the warmth of a population that lives a little further south, which can be a really cool combination.
What has your experience been? Do people try to make you defend the place?
Julie Scharper: Yeah.
I feel like, if you’re from Baltimore, you always hear that people from outside might think that Baltimore is grittier or has a lot of crime. But I think people from here are so intensely proud of Baltimore. We aggressively love Baltimore.
I was at Stoop Storytelling a couple weeks ago. It was their 20th anniversary show, and a lot of people from creative institutions were sharing how their organizations came together.
Halfway through the show, I realized that every speaker made a point of talking about how much they love Baltimore and how they were only able to do what they do because they were here. Then they would segue into a quirky Baltimore story, like hitchhiking and John Waters appearing and hands them a Natty Boh.
Everyone had some weird Baltimore story.
And they all ended with something like, “I love Baltimore, and I’ll fight anyone who doesn’t.” That really is the mindset here.
I was talking about this with someone who recently moved to Baltimore, and they said it feels like Baltimore people are saying, “Please love us.” But I don’t think that’s it. I think it’s more like, “I love Baltimore. You better love Baltimore too, or I’m never going to forgive you.”
There’s definitely a perception from people who haven’t experienced Baltimore. But those who have understand what an amazing, rich, beautiful culture we have, how much history has happened here, and how warm and funny the people are.
Baltimore is full of funny people, whether it’s someone at a neighborhood convenience store or John Waters. There’s just a lot of humor here.
Lionel Foster: I’m assuming, like me, you have a pretty solid technique for opening crabs, where a lot of outsiders do not. Is that the case?
Julie Scharper: That is definitely true.
You have to remove that little central piece, open up the crab, and then go from there.
Lionel Foster: Some people feel it’s too labor-intensive, but it’s kind of like baseball. You sit back, invest the time, and it rewards you. I say this as someone who doesn’t even watch that much baseball, but the metaphor still applies.
Julie Scharper: I get it.
It’s such a wonderful communal experience too. Your hands are busy, your mouth is busy, and you’re free to sit there and chat with everyone.
Lionel Foster: Julie, this has been great. We’ve covered a lot. Is there anything you’d like to mention that I didn’t give you a chance to talk about?
Julie Scharper: I think that’s it. I hope your listeners will read the Banner and check out what we do, maybe think about helping to create something similar in other areas.
And I always welcome people’s news tips, so if anyone listening has a good Maryland story, reach out.
Lionel Foster: Always hustling. I love it. Thank you, Julie.
Julie Scharper: Thanks, Lionel.