CEO's You Should Know x The Baltimore Banner

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
iHeartMedia Presents CEOs.

Speaker 2 (00:05):
You should know. I am John Denkell, founder and CEO
of Dnkele Business Development and former publisher of the Baltimore
Business Journal. This is Iheartradios CEOs you should know, and
I'm here today with Bob Cone, CEO of the Baltimore Banner.
Welcome Bob, and thanks for being here.

Speaker 1 (00:20):
John, happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yeah, yeah, look, really looking forward to our conversations. I
appreciate you taking the time out. I thought it would
be good to start in a conversation and the getting
to know you a little bit in the organization. So
for those who aren't familiar, could you tell us about
the Baltimore Banner.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Sure. We are a nonprofit digital news organization serving Baltimore
and Greater Maryland. We've got a website and an app,
fourteen newsletters, about three hundred thousand social followers, audio and
video journalism as well of course as text, and we're

(00:59):
found did about two and a half years ago summer
of twenty twenty two, initially as an alternative to what
was Hedge Fund New Hedge Fund ownership of the Baltimore Sun.
And we've grown a lot in these two and a
half years and established a beachhead here in Maryland.

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Yeah, that's great. And what's your mission?

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Yeah, the mission is surrounds being three words, local, trusted,
and independent. We are providing local journalism that is trusted
and independent, and by that I mean non corporate and
non We are nonprofits, so we're not don't have a
corporate ownership, don't have shareholders, and nonpartisan. In the times

(01:46):
of polarized media, we are not caught up in the
kind of cable wars, et cetera. And we're here to
inform and strengthen and inspire our readers with you know,
content that has impact in the community and that our
readers find useful and even indispensable.

Speaker 2 (02:06):
That's great. That's great. And what's your coverage area and
are you planning on, you know, growing that coverage area
in the next year or two.

Speaker 1 (02:14):
Well, if you look at just our subscriber base, which
is about sixty thousand paid subscribers right now, we're about
one about one third of those are in Baltimore City
and about fifty percent are in nearby surrounding counties Baltimore
County and Rondo County and Howard County, and then the
remaining is really the rest of Maryland, with some smattering

(02:36):
of national and even global subscribers. So we are, you know,
mostly within the gravitational pull of Baltimore, but we're spreading
to the rest of Maryland and that will continue to
be our path.

Speaker 2 (02:53):
That's great, that's great. Thank you, appreciate you sharing that.
And you know, coming from the media background myself and
especially growing up early on in the newspaper business, you know,
I was always fascinated about the nonprofit model. And I
guess in your opinion, you know, how has being a
nonprofit positively impacted your quality of journalism?

Speaker 1 (03:18):
Well, I think in two ways the nonprofit status is
important to us. The first is it underscores our civic
mission that we are here to serve our readers, to
serve the people of Maryland again in forum strength and inspire.
But to be honest, you can be a for profit
and serve that mission as well, but it helps underline

(03:39):
it with our own staff and with our audience. And
the second is more pragmatic. We rely on film profit
contributions for about twenty percent twenty two percent of our revenue,
and as a nonprofit we can take tax deductible contributions
and that's an important part of our overall revenue.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
Got it got interesting, Yeah, And is the nonprofit model.
I know you all aren't the only one out there
doing it. And it seemed, you know, five six, seven
years ago, some of the organizations where daily newspapers were
struggling a little bit to keep subscribers and you know,
because of the prolification of online media and anybody was

(04:23):
kind of being a reporter at that time. Has that
model worked across the country that you've seen.

Speaker 1 (04:29):
Well, your right to observe that it it's kind of
swept the country. There are so many nonprofit news organizations
that have cropped up in the last ten years, and
you know, we're a bit different in that we're the
biggest of them. We came in with some important runway

(04:50):
funding at the outset. We now eighty five people in
our newsroom, and we're quite a bit bigger in terms
of audience and size of newsroom. Most of if not all,
of the nonprofits that have that have you know, that

(05:10):
have cropped up and that's allowed us to create the
kind of content that attracts subscribers, which is our main
source of our main source of business.

Speaker 2 (05:19):
Yeah, yeah, and I imagine also I like the model. Actually,
I think it also plays on the trust that readers
are getting from nonprofit news organizations. I think that I
would imagine I'm sure there's tons of studies don about this,
but there I would imagine the trust in reporting is higher,

(05:41):
just just a perception, and then those of more you know,
kind of corporate run or headgs front run kind of organizations.
I think that would be a kind of a natural coincidence.
Is have you kind of seen that or is that
an understanding out there? Well?

Speaker 1 (05:56):
Yeah, as you know as well as I do, that
that trust and journalists and has been eroding over the years.
And as a nonprofit, I think we do start with
a leg up on trusts. You have to earn it
and you have to keep it. But again, we don't
have corporate shareholders. We're not owned by a hedge fund,

(06:17):
and so our only constituents are our readers. You do
need to find a way to make money, but we
do that through advertising. We do that through subscriptions and
events and philanthropy. And you know that's really the second
leg of our mission is to be sustainable. So part
of our path right now is to make as much

(06:41):
money as we spend and we're closing the gap on that.
We're only two and a half years old of the
year or two, we will we will close that gap
and we will be a sustainable operation.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
That's great, congratulations, that's great news. What advice would you
give to young people that are wanting to or into
the you know journalism these days? You know, it's the
times of change, at least since I've been in that business,
because of the you know, online models and things like that.

(07:13):
But there's still a lot of people that are interested
in reporting and doing good journalism. So what what what
advice would you give to folks that are looking at
that career option.

Speaker 1 (07:23):
Yes, some of the advice is the same advice you
know that you know, somebody might have given me when
I started forty years ago. I was a journalist for
about twenty five years before I switched over to the
business side. UH, and some of it is different. The
first that the same is curiosity, intellectual curiosity, kind of

(07:44):
a bordering on kind of a nosiness, right, and and persistence.

Speaker 2 (07:50):
Right.

Speaker 1 (07:50):
This is a hard industry to break into, UH, and
it can be hard to rise up, so you need
those basic at and then of course, the whole suite
of digital skills are now just completely understood to be
essential in a way that wasn't the case when I
got in. Uh and uh, you know, being comfortable in

(08:12):
that world, and of course we are. This is the
first place I've worked which is digital only, including audio
and video, and just being fluent in that world is
now essential coming in. And the good news is that
that that generation of young journalists is fluent in that.

Speaker 2 (08:34):
So that's helpful, That's great, that's cool. Thank you, appreciate
you talking about that. I know you mentioned your funding
model as a nonprofit and the you know, twenty twenty
two percent is coming in from film thropping. Is that
through foundation? Is that through just individual giving? Is is it?
Is it a myriad of things? So I wanted to

(08:58):
ask you about that side. But then on the advertising side,
is approximately you know, what's the kind of percentage of
your revenue that's through advertising?

Speaker 1 (09:09):
Yeah, so I'll give you a breakdown. There's really four
principal sources of revenue that I can talk about. Philanthropy.
Our biggest source is subscriptions, So about forty five percent
of our revenue will be consumer revenue. A B. Twoc
model where our readers are providing the resources for us

(09:32):
to sustain the newsroom. About thirty three percent is advertising
and events. So put those two together, about thirty percent advertising,
about five percent or so events, So call that thirty
five and we can come back to the advertising components there.
And then twenty two or so is the philanthropy. And

(09:56):
that is broken down pretty much the way you described.
I would call that three sources. There are individual donors
everything from the twenty five dollars, two more from individuals.
There are local foundations here in the Baltimore and Maryland area,
which is the main source of our philanthropic funding right now,

(10:19):
and then national foundations which have started funding journalism and
we are actively involved in working with them as well.

Speaker 2 (10:31):
That's great, that's great, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah,
the advertising one is interesting. I grew up on the
advertising side, and actually my goal was to be a reporter,
but I got into the newspaper at the time on
the sales side, and I ended up sticking with the
business side things because I enjoyed that. But there's such

(10:54):
fragmentation now in advertising, and I know a lot of
the more corporate you know, kind of based new organizations
are kind of struggling and having to come up with
different revenue streams to make up for the loss and
advertising revenue, especially on the print side. So the fact
that you guys are going in all digital and especially

(11:15):
and events and things like that is seems like seems
like a good model.

Speaker 1 (11:19):
Well, really, it's just about it's about having resilience by
having multiple streams. You know, earlier places where I worked,
like at Newsweek and at Conde Nass which owned Wired magazine,
where I worked for eight years, and I was at
Newsweek for about ten years early in my career, those
were really overexposed to the advertising industry and they were

(11:40):
go go years for advertising. So yeah, the over exposure
didn't matter. Those were very excellent years to be the
owners of Newsweek or Conde Nast. That world, of course
collapsed when when when journalism? When digital? When? And when
Google and Facebook kind of sees the advertising business and

(12:03):
the folks who were in the best position were those
who had a consumer revenue strategy as well, that had
subscriptions or membership. And I have a big soft spot
for advertising. My dad was in advertising for sixty years
and he had a small firm that grew to be
like a medium sized firm in Chicago, and I learned

(12:25):
a lot by watching that and working there in the summer.
But it is, it's a dangerous place if you're advertising
supported only right.

Speaker 2 (12:35):
Now, it is. Yeah, I grew up in that era,
and I've been out of the news business now for
about seven years. But even at that time, advertising revenue
represented probably sixty five seventy percent of not included event
sponsorships and things like that. But you know, I think
that I think so many other news organizations are trying

(12:58):
to switch to more like a fifty to fifty model,
a fifty percent subscriptions fifty percent ad revender because it's just, yeah,
it's just drying up there and or trying to come
up with data stream or revenue streams around data and
things like that. But yeah, it's interesting. I can probably talk.

Speaker 1 (13:15):
To you for two hours, but you're right, the last
ten years it's been kind of a desperate flight to
consumer revenue models. And those and those who were there early,
like say at the Wall Street Journal, were in much
better shape than those digital upstarts that relied only on
advertising and therefore page views and page inventory and suddenly

(13:38):
they're chasing a consumer model with subscriptions and it's much figger.

Speaker 2 (13:42):
Right, Yeah, definitely. Yeah, And you mentioned events. What type
of events are you guys producing.

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Well, we do one big flagship event a year called
Impact Maryland about a thousand people. We've done two years
in a row now over at MYRAF Hall here in Baltimore,
and that's a day long kind of deep dive into
the issues and people that are driving Maryland and uh.

(14:11):
And then we do a series of smaller events around
emerging leaders around food and wine, around technology, uh and
increasingly regional events in the counties as well.

Speaker 2 (14:24):
Got it. Yeah, And how can the business community get
involved with the Baltimore Banner?

Speaker 1 (14:30):
Well, just start, we want everyone to read the banner,
read and then love us so much you subscribe. And then, obviously,
because we do rely on advertising and event sponsorship, if if,
if the banner feels like a good fit for you,
for your message and your product, we would love to
work with you to have you support us on the

(14:51):
advertising side. Uh. And we have institutional subscriptions so you
can you can buy a subscription package for your company
or your university. And then basically it's an enterprise relationship
and all kinds of ways. And if you have a
corporate foundation, you can make a donation through your corporate

(15:12):
foundation as well.

Speaker 2 (15:14):
Got it cool? Thank you appreciate that. And last, on
the business side, where do you guys see growth opportunity?
I know you mentioned obviously on the advertising sign and
continue to expand that and expanding out on your subscription
model out into the other counties. Is talk about the
growth opportunity you see?

Speaker 1 (15:34):
Yeah, I think it starts with reaching more prospects and
then converting those prospects into paid subscribers because they appreciate
the content. So one way we're going for reach is
that geographic expansion, but another way is the breath of
our coverage. So we now in our first couple of

(15:55):
years we kind of focused and gradually not all at one,
but our main core topics politics and business, criminal justice,
K twelve, education, you know, arts and food and sports
or kind of core UH starts to feel like a
like like a newspaper UH portfolio. And we've added in

(16:17):
the last couple of months environment, higher education, obituaries, and
critically more and more local local angles on national stories.
Just in the last couple couple of weeks. UH. Since
President Trump's inauguration and the executive orders, we have focused
on the impact of national stories on our local audience

(16:40):
and of course a lot of federal workers UH living
here in Maryland. So that's one way we expand our
reach is through through the topics that we cover and
we wroken more people who might be interested in one
thing or another, UH, And that plus the geographic expansion,
will will help us build a stronger base of support.

Speaker 2 (17:03):
Excellent, excellent, appreciate you sharing that. All right, switch gears
a little bit. I love talking about leadership on the show.
How would you describe your leadership style?

Speaker 1 (17:15):
Yeah, I think that my job is to make sure
that everybody understands what we're trying to do here. There's
a vision for the banner, and that the people who
work here, which about one hundred and thirty five people
right now, they understand what the vision is and what
their role is in achieving that vision and the mission,

(17:36):
and that then they have the tools to get that done,
the resources, the technological tools, the budgets, so that there's
a not a mismatch between expectations and what they can
get done. And then really just give the autonomy to
the individual teams to go and do that with guidance
from senior leadership and from me. So I'm a big

(17:59):
believer in being the kind of leader who who make
sure you have what you need to get done and
then maybe bush rack my way through any issues with
the board or issues with you know, state politics. We're
active in understanding what's happening in Annapolis that might affect

(18:19):
us and just give everyone the tools so they can
get they can get their job done.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Yeah. Yeah, I like what you said about the vision
and communicating that because I think a lot of organizations
struggle with how to do that and how to do
it consistently and that they add more people that those
folks understand what the vision is. What are you doing
to like, continue to perpetuate that, continue to like I

(18:45):
will say, enforce it, but just make it top of
mind with people, because I think it is something you
have to kind of continue to do. Even if someone's
been there for you know, since the time you started
two and a half years ago, It's still important to
communicate vision because sometimes I also can change, or at
least some portions of your vision can change. How do

(19:06):
you how do you do that, how do you communicate that,
how do you keep it consistent? Do you offer any
advice around that?

Speaker 1 (19:13):
Yeah, you're totally right about that observation. You know, I
do regular town halls with the whole with the whole staff.
We did one yesterday. We do those about every six
or so weeks. And I always start by reading the mission,
even though some people and the mission is pretty much
the same words it was when we launched two and

(19:34):
a half years ago. When I came a year ago, I
did a little bit of wordsmithing at it. I can't
help it. I'm a journalist, business guy. But by and
large we that is the mission. And yet you know,
there's attrition. There are new people, the old, the older ones,
the ones that be inn since you know, way back
in the founding NII twenty twenty two. They're not expected

(19:54):
to remember, you know, a two cent, all the words
in those two or three cents. So we talk about
the mission. And one thing that I like to do
is the very transparent about the financials. Uh And and
you know, you know, as as a guy in media,
there are were many many years the newsroom didn't care

(20:17):
much about the business side. And newsrooms have learned to
care about that because of the precarious nature of the
media industry. And we we look around as we see
layoffs with see places closing and and and jobs shrinking,
you know, real time of crisis in the local news business.

(20:40):
So there's an active interest. Uh. So I talk about
my commitment to transparency and my hope that people respect
that by keeping the information closely held just in our team.
And we talked about revenue and costs and and path

(21:00):
to profitability uh and uh in a very open way.
And I think that that's important in a way that
really didn't seem important a couple of decades ago.

Speaker 2 (21:11):
Yeah, I love that you talked about that because I'm
a huge proponent of that too. And you know, when
I was in that role, I every month I would
put our numbers up on the board and have an
all staff meeting. And and to your point, a lot
in the past, the editorial staff was not exposed really
to that. It was really for the business offices and

(21:32):
you know, individually, maybe the advertising team. But like it
to me, I think doing that and I'm sure what
that it just promotes ownership of the numbers too, like,
because everybody is a part of that, whether it's getting
Paige views from great articles and to you know, uh,
selling digital advertising to selling more subscriptions. Everybody has a

(21:54):
part in growing the organization. And I think you can
only demonstrate that by like showing in the numbers, man
like what and I love that, you know, having also
showing them, and then getting the department heads to kind
of talk about it like where why we why we
have such a great month, or hey, why are we
down this month? You know, I at that level of communication,
that transparency, I think is awesome. So I appreciate you

(22:18):
sharing that, yeah, one hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (22:20):
And and and in addition to sharing that out regularly,
you know, like a lot of newsrooms, we have big
screens throughout the office. Uh that that track you know,
in real time, uh, page views, uh, subscribers, what stories
are are trending well with readers in that moment. And

(22:42):
we care a lot about engaging our current subscribers. Uh.
There's always a focus on attracting new subscribers, but it's
easier to keep a customer, that is, to find a
new customer. Yes, and very important that people who who
make the decision to be with us, Uh, we are
giving them what they need and expect from the Baltimore Banner.

(23:05):
So we tracked the subscriber engagement very closely and do
a lot of qualitative and quantitative uh work, you know,
research work and data work with those with with our
readers to make sure that we're playing the role in
their lives that they need.

Speaker 2 (23:23):
Yeah, yeah, that's great, that's great. So, I know, obviously
the pandemic has been you know, gone for a while now,
and they were kind of living with the aftermath and
the effects of that. How are how are you guys structured?
Is is do you have like a hybrid work environment?
And you know.

Speaker 3 (23:42):
What what was what was the impact that you know,
the COVID had And I guess you know two and
a half years, you guys were kind of out of
it in a sense, but still you.

Speaker 2 (23:53):
Know, kind of uh, you felt the effects. So what
does that look like from a from a workplace point
for you?

Speaker 1 (24:01):
Yeah, so you're right, we're kind of founded mid COVID,
but after after the shockwave, the initial two year shockwave,
and then I arrived, uh kind of when COVID seemed
like in the review mirror, although right now we have
a mini wave of COVID running through the office today. Actually,
but for the most part, what we the legacy of that,

(24:24):
uh is that we're a hybrid organization. People are expected
to be in uh in the office three days a week.
A lot of us are in uh you know, four
days a week or even five uh uh. And of
course everyone learned to use the digital tools and and
video tools uh so uh during during COVID, which means

(24:50):
when you're when you're when you're remote, we're all connected.
And uh. But I I don't know about you, but
I couldn't wait to get back in an office.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yeah, I wouldn't have been able to survive. Like just
working from that was the fun about, you know, getting
in there and like coaching people and nurturing people and
getting in the sick of things, right, That's that's the
fun stuff.

Speaker 1 (25:12):
The young and the younger employees. You know, some of
us have been doing this a long time. We might
have had a house with a study or a big
kitchen table to work at. A lot of them are
sitting on their beds and working in the bedrooms all day.
And they're also not learning from anybody or not as effectively.
So and I've got kids and who are in their twenties,

(25:35):
and I was I was just saying, then, you guys
are missing key years now being mentored, and so I
was thrilled to be back in the office, and I
think a lot of people are.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
Yeah, I think so too. I think it's like coming back.
I appreciate you sharing it because I think there are
still companies out there still figuring it out a little
bit and trying things. And but yeah, the whole idea
of a collaboration and teamwork and just getting to know
your co workers at all, and just for the management
team to have that one on one time in bonding

(26:07):
with their employees, it's such positive stuff that it's sad
that the twenty something things now are impacted by that unfortunately.
So let's yeah, So what gets you excited about the
future of the Baltimare Banner.

Speaker 1 (26:26):
Well, we're just getting started and just showing what we
can do, showing ourselves that we can do. We're going
to get continue to get better at the journalism at
the at the and I think we're pretty good at
it right now, but at the reporting and at the
writing and at the presentation of the stories to our audiences,

(26:47):
there's a lot of growth there. Are so many stories
here in Baltimore and across Maryland. We're now at a size,
you know, with eighty five people in the newsroom where
we can cover a lot of them. But we are
you know, nowhere near the ceiling of what we can
do journalistically. And the journalism powers the business. So it

(27:08):
gets me excited as we continue to be more and
more successful with with with our reporting and our and
and what we what we deliver our audiences. That drives
all of our revenue streams, that drives subscriptions and advertising
and philanthropy. Uh. And so it gets me excited is

(27:32):
doing better and better work and closing the gap so
we can get to sustainability.

Speaker 2 (27:38):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (27:39):
Part of the bet here of the founding of the
Banner is to demonstrate, you know, first to ourselves and
then to others, that local journalism, local news can can work,
can be a enterprise. Because it's it's in decline and perilous,

(28:00):
perilous state across the country.

Speaker 2 (28:02):
It is. Yeah, yeah, and I think that's too. I
think it does you're you're right, I mean content, content
that's king and it does, you know, drive, It's going
to drive more subscribers, more advertisers, more you know, attendees,
all those things that are gonna lead to more, more revenue.
I love that. What what keeps you up at night?

Speaker 1 (28:22):
Yeah, Well, a lot of it is just a simple
equation of, uh, you know, can we uh find the
right recipe on the business side to support a newsion
of one hundred journalists?

Speaker 2 (28:35):
Right?

Speaker 1 (28:35):
Uh? And uh you need a certain amount of Uh,
you need a certain amount of revenue to do that.
We're on a path. We're on the path, but we're
not there yet. Uh. And so a lot of his
day to day execution, I think also, Uh, what keeps
me up at night is the extent of which there's
a threat to the independence and freedom of journalists, not

(29:01):
just globally but nationwide now. And I think that it's
not that you know, it's not a great moment for
doneralists don't have the support of the institutions that they
they have had over the years. Some of that could
be the fault of the media industry, and some of

(29:23):
this is really the changing kind of landscape, the changing
political landscape at the same.

Speaker 2 (29:29):
Time, gotcha, gotcha? Well, thank you? Yeah, And to wrap
things up, you know, is there anything else you'd like
our listeners to know about you and the Bottomore Banner.

Speaker 1 (29:40):
I'm just really excited about what we're doing. I think
we do really really interesting and good work and we
are still learning. We're very eager for feedback. So if
you're listening to this and you're a reader or a
subscriber and want to share any information with us about
how we can do better, email me Bob at the

(30:03):
Baltimore Banner dot com. Uh, we would love your feedback.
And uh, I just think that we're really just getting
started here.

Speaker 2 (30:11):
Great and thank you, And what's the what's the best
way for us to get more information about the Baltimore Banner.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
You know, the Baltimore Banner dot com or download the app.
But uh uh, you know everything's on our website, including
you know, the our our our by, our journalism. We
have a bunch of we have a bunch of newsletters.
The easiest way to kind of kind of dip a
toe in the water with the Banner is to subscribe

(30:38):
to the Morning the daily morning newsletter called the Scan.

Speaker 3 (30:43):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (30:44):
You don't have to you don't have to be a
paid subscriber to get the Scan, and you can start
getting a flavor of what the banner does.

Speaker 2 (30:51):
Yeah, that's a great newsletter. I obviously subscribe, so yeah,
congrats on that. I do read that just about every morning.
So well, thank you so much. Mom. Great talking with you.
I gosh, I probably I can talk shop on the
today Probably will you. But I really do appreciate you time,
appreciate you coming on the show, and and look forward
to talking with you again sometime.

Speaker 1 (31:12):
Likewise, John, thank you very much for your time. This
has been iHeartMedia CEOs.

Speaker 2 (31:19):
You should know