Nonprofit news site The Banner expands beyond Baltimore

The Banner, the three-year-old Maryland news nonprofit that earned national recognition with a Pulitzer win this year, is launching a news bureau in Montgomery County. The expansion into Maryland’s most populous county — where it already has several thousand paying subscribers — brings The Banner into the northern Washington suburbs, and marks its first hub outside Baltimore.

The launch follows the nonprofit’s subtle rebrand last month, when it shifted its website domain from thebaltimorebanner.com to thebanner.com. “The shift simply reflects the reality of our expanding coverage across Maryland,” CEO Bob Cohn said in a statement announcing the change. “Many readers already call us The Banner, and this migration allows us to show up in a way that audiences know us.” (Similarly, The Minneapolis Star Tribune rebranded as The Minnesota Star Tribune last year.)

“It has always been our plan to expand beyond our core audience in Baltimore,” Cohn told me in an email. “As we looked at communities further from the core, we saw real hunger for Banner-style coverage of local news, but audiences were confused by ‘Baltimore’ in our name. So in these new regions, we will show up as The Banner.”

The Banner team has been planning for the Montgomery expansion since this spring, when leaders decided a dedicated Montgomery bureau made sense. “We expect the Montgomery launch to help us grow all aspects of our business — subscribers, advertising, and philanthropy,” Cohn added.

The Washington Post’s Jeremy Barr reported that the new bureau will consist of around nine journalists, led by Zuri Berry, who was previously a digital strategy editor for The Banner. Seven of the nine are new hires, Cohn told me; of the two positions from the Baltimore newsroom, one has already been backfilled.

According to the Post, The Banner is not yet profitable, but has about 69,000 paying subscribers. Per a press release from The Banner, this includes “paid subscribers in all 23 Maryland counties and Baltimore City.” The Banner is Maryland’s largest newsroom, with a staff of around 145 people, including about 95 in the newsroom, the Post reported.

To expand the reach of its reporting, The Banner is partnering with NBC4 Washington and Telemundo 44 Washington; Banner reporters will “participate in on-air segments” on the two stations, per the press release. (The Banner also has partnerships with WJZ and WYPR in Baltimore.)

The Post reported that starting Monday night, readers looking for Montgomery County-specific Banner reporting will be directed to a new homepage without “Baltimore.” The Banner is “exploring further growth opportunities,” Cohn told me, but has nothing further to announce for now.

You can read the Post’s full story here, and The Banner’s announcement here.