JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Fun fact, the newspaper of record in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is older than the U.S. Constitution. When the Pittsburgh Gazette was founded in 1786, it served about 300 people living outside the frontier outpost of Fort Pitt. After 240 years, it's now the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, and it was about to shut down in May due to financial trouble before a nonprofit organization announced it had acquired the paper's assets and pledged to keep publishing.
STEWART BAINUM: Well, it's a - it's really a natural extension of our mission to provide high-quality, independent journalism and to build a sustainable business model for local news that could be replicated.
SUMMERS: Stewart Bainum is the founder of that nonprofit, the Venits Institute For Local Journalism. It also operates the Baltimore Banner, which is under 4 years old but has already won a Pulitzer Prize. We reached Bainum to ask about his foundations, plans in Pittsburgh, and what he believes are the big issues in sustaining local news.
BAINUM: Really a talented newsroom is the key and being willing to attract and retain that talent and doing what you need to to retain it. And then an infrastructure that works to understand what the needs are of the audience, of the people in the community, what will help them navigate their lives and their families' lives better. A big part of this is also culture. What are the values of the organization? You know, what we've worked on in Baltimore is to have a culture that's collaborative, respectful, ambitious, a sense of urgency, but that is transparent and open across the board.
SUMMERS: Part of the Post-Gazette's money troubles stem from yearslong court battles with the paper's unionized staff, and courts ultimately sided with them. Do have a plan to work with the newsroom'z union?
BAINUM: Yeah, for sure. We'll listen to and we look forward to listening to everybody and learning from all parties in Pittsburgh. And we're encouraging all the employees of - the current employees of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette to apply for jobs with us.
SUMMERS: We reached out to the Newspaper Guild of Pittsburgh, which said to us that it's hopeful and looks forward to a collaborative, collective bargaining relationship, but that it's also worried about your new ownership, continuing the previous ownership's attempts at busting our union. Your response to that?
BAINUM: Yeah, there's no intention, I mean - but restructuring a business that's been losing money for decades requires discipline, and we will be thoughtful and transparent as we move forward. But the revenues that the Post-Gazette generates does not justify the size of the newsroom, and so we have to adjust that and then build up the journalism from there and build up the readership and then increase the size of the newsroom.
SUMMERS: Do you anticipate immediate staff cuts?
BAINUM: It's a new business. We're buying assets and starting a new business with those assets.
SUMMERS: I think we should just mention for folks that you are not just a nonprofit executive. You're chairman of Choice Hotels. You've personally pledged $30 million over the next five years to support the work of the Venetoulis Institute. What do you hope to see? What do you hope things look like then?
BAINUM: Well, we want to get to - at break even. We're not at break even yet. Here's how the scale works. Our operating expenses today in Maryland are $30 million. Pittsburgh has roughly - under our management, will have roughly $30 million a year in expenses, as well. And you share those expenses between the two units. There's real scale benefits in this business, and I think it's potentially a solution to figuring out how you create a sustainable business model for local news at scale.
SUMMERS: Thinking broadly about the industry, I will note that NPR itself announced a nine-digit philanthropic gift just last week. Is this sort of major giving going to have to be part of how news organizations sustain themselves moving forward?
BAINUM: I hope not because the philanthropic community is pulled in all kinds of different directions, and news is one of them. But I think there needs to be a way to figure out how to be independent of just philanthropy because great journalism - if there's not scale, if there's not a lot of readers, if it's not being read, doesn't really have an impact.
SUMMERS: That's Stewart Bainum, chairman of the Venetoulis Institute For Local Journalism. Thanks so much.
BAINUM: Thank you, Juana. We appreciate the exposure. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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