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The Baltimore Banner is a news website in Baltimore founded by the Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism, which is a nonprofit set up by Stewart W. Bainum Jr. It launched June 14, 2022. It had a staff of 125, with about 80 working the newsroom, as of March 2024. The newspaper had 55,000 subscribers by the end of 2024, and brought in $13 million in revenue with 45% from subscriptions, 35% from advertising and 22% from philanthropy.
The Banner won the 2025 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting in recognition of its coverage of drug overdoses.
After Alden Global Capital refused an offer from Bainum to buy The Baltimore Sun as part of their 2021 acquisition of Tribune Publishing, Bainum backed an all-digital, nonprofit competitor to be named The Baltimore Banner in 2022, owned by The Venetoulis Institute for Local Journalism. It launched with 42 journalists and planned to expand to 70 by the end of the year.
Bainum cited his experience from the Maryland State Legislature in the 1970s, when "he marveled at the reporters’ ability to sort the honest politicians from the 'political whores' by exposing abuses of power." "Mr. Bainum’s goal... is to build the largest newsroom in Maryland — more than 100 journalists," reported The New York Times.
On October 27, 2021, The Venetoulis Institute announced the hiring of former Los Angeles Times managing editor Kimi Yoshino as the Banners editor-in-chief.
The next day, The Institute announced the hiring of Klas Uden as Chief Marketing Officer, Shameel Arafin as Chief Product Officer, Early Cokley as Head of Technology, and Andre Jones as Head of People, Culture and Diversity. In December 2021, the Venetoulis Institute has hired former Wall Street Journal and Dow Jones executive Imtiaz Patel as chief executive officer. On December 19, 2023, the news organization announced that Bob Cohn, former President of The Economist magazine, had been named Chief Executive Officer, replacing Patel, who left in July 2023.
The Banner has hired several current and former Sun reporters, including crime reporter Justin Fenton, education reporter Liz Bowie, enterprise reporter Tim Prudente, and statehouse reporter Pam Wood. The Banner has also set up a “Creatives in Residence” program to "feature the work of Baltimore-area artists and writers." At launch, this group included D. Watkins, Kondwani Fidel, Kerry Graham, and Mikea Hugley.
Shortly before its launch, the Banner struck a partnership with WYPR, an NPR affiliate. The outlets pledged to share content and work together to cover stories and develop joint programming. In August 2022, the station announced a partnership with WJZ-TV, a CBS-owned and operated station. The two outlets share online content and Banner journalists appear on the station's 9 a.m. newscasts.
The Baltimore Banner bolstered its school sports coverage with its August 2022 acquisition of Varsity Sports Network.
In March 2024, the Banner announced plans to expand its editorial coverage from the city into Baltimore County, and from there to Anne Arundel County and Howard County.
In February 2025, the Banner won a Polk Award for its coverage of Baltimore's drug overdose crisis. Reporters Alissa Zhu and Nick Thieme, and photojournalist Jessica Gallagher later won a Pulitzer in local reporting, shared with the New York Times, for the same series of stories.
In May 2025, Yoshino departed the Banner to become a managing editor at The Washington Post. Brian McGrory, former editor-in-chief of The Boston Globe, chair of the journalism department at Boston University and a board member for the Banner's parent organization, will serve as interim editor while a nationwide search is conducted for Yoshino's successor.
2005 On the Forward Edge
In 2005, the Baltimore Banner featured in a chapter of a novelistic retelling of history called On the Forward Edge by Robert D. Loevy, professor emeritus at Colorado College.
The name here substitutes for a real-life newspaper ( Baltimore News-Post), owned by the "Patriot Newspaper chain" (Hearst Corporation), competing with the Baltimore Beacon ( Baltimore Sun). The chapter focuses on a civil rights protest at a local restaurant chain, amidst which the protagonist realizes: "it was the first time in history that photographs of African-Americans, except for wanted criminals, were printed in the Baltimore Banner."
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