A "Banner" deal for local journalism
Some great news from the ailing world of local journalism. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette is going to be saved by the parent company of the terrific Baltimore Banner:
The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which runs The Baltimore Banner and is financed by the hotel magnate Stewart W. Bainum Jr., said on Tuesday that it had reached an agreement with the newspaper’s current owner, Block Communications, to buy the assets of The Post-Gazette and run it as a nonprofit. The transaction is expected to take effect on May 4, ensuring there is no gap in publishing.
The deal is a rare spot of good news for the media industry, which has endured waves of metropolitan and local newspaper closures and widening local news deserts around the country for the past two decades. A 2025 report by Northwestern University found that more than 130 papers had shut in the preceding year alone.
Lately, it's seemed as if there's two kinds of sustainable media company. Huge -- the NYT, Bloomberg -- or extremely small, like the Substackers.
The Baltimore Banner is hope for a different way -- local news done well without all the overheads of the previous era: expensive executives and clueless publishers that drove those vital businesses into the ground.