The Business of Journalism – Reinventing Local News: Revenue Models, Innovation and the Future

Roy Schwartz is co-founder of Axios and Axios HQ, co-author of the best-selling book “Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less” and executive producer of the Emmy Award-winning "Axios on HBO." He currently serves as president of Axios and CEO of Axios HQ. Describing the founding of Axios to Maryland Today in 2019, he said the company began by talking to business and political leaders across the country. “We basically got a picture that everyone who needed news information to do their job was overwhelmed with the amount of information coming toward them, and what they really needed was the ‘what's new’ and ‘why it matters,’” he said. “And that ultimately led us to understanding that we needed to create a new format, a new format that was efficient in terms of how to disseminate information.”

Schwartz previously served as chief revenue officer at Politico. He holds a bachelor’s degree and a master’s of business administration from the Robert H. Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, and he served for many years on the Philip Merrill College of Journalism’s board of visitors.

Stewart W. Bainum Jr. founded The Baltimore Banner in 2022. In an essay in The Banner at the time, he said, “This enterprise exists to make a real difference here in Baltimore and to reinvent the kind of journalism every community needs. And so, we have established two goals: one local and one national. First, to create a first-rate newsroom that tells the stories of Baltimore and its people, strengthens our communities and holds our leaders to account. And second, to build a sustainable business model for local news that can be replicated in communities across all fifty states.”

Bainum has served as chairman of Choice Hotels International since October 1997. Under his leadership, Choice — whose brands include Radisson, Quality Inn and EconoLodge — has grown under his leadership from a franchisor with 339 hotels in the United States to a global enterprise with nearly 7,500 hotels in 46 countries and territories.

With longtime local news outlets struggling amid lower advertising and subscription revenues, experts from the Smith School explore alternatives in a discussion with local news leaders.

• Moderator: Kathy Best, director of the UMD Howard Center for Investigative Journalism 
• Catherine Hollingsworth, founder of The Bowie Sun
• Kit Slack, executive director of Streetcar Suburbs Publishing
• W. Jason Choi, assistant professor of marketing at the Smith School, on supercharging engagement through multidimensional bundling of local news and services
• Bobby Zhou, associate professor of marketing at the Smith School, on a cooperative ownership model: opportunities and risks

What do the numbers really look like at a large-scale news outlet – and what does that mean for other local news sources? Daniel McCarthy of the Smith School presents a new analysis. 

• Moderator: Marty Kaiser, managing director of Capital News Service
• Kathy Best, director of the UMD Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
• Merrill Brown, founding editor of MSNBC.com, longtime news executive and academic
• Daniel McCarthy, associate professor of marketing at the Smith School

For-profit newspapers have been closing – but alternatives are emerging. Our speakers explore the news startup, the nonprofit chain and the one-person entrepreneur on Substack.

• Moderator: Christoph Mergerson, assistant professor at Merrill College
• Ken Doctor, founder of Lookout Santa Cruz
• Austin Tedesco, head of business development at Substack
• Tom Wiley, CEO of the National Trust for Local News

Merrill Professor of the Practice Tom Rosenstiel does a short presentation on how the local news product can be reinvented around user needs.
 

Researchers at Merrill College and the Smith School discuss their extensive work on finding ways to harness artificial intelligence to improve journalism.

• Moderator: Wedad Elmaghraby, dean’s chair of operations management at the Smith School
• Cody Buntain, assistant professor at the UMD College of Information
• Eaman Jahani, assistant professor at the Smith School.
• Sean Mussenden, data editor for the UMD Howard Center for Investigative Journalism
• Derek Willis, lecturer in data and computational journalism at Merrill College
• Kunpeng Zhang, associate professor at the Smith School

Hear from experts at the Smith School and Merrill College about how their work can improve the business prospects of local journalism outlets.

• Giovanni Luca Ciampaglia, assistant professor at the UMD College of Information, on what AI agents and social media decentralization mean for local news (Room: 1303 Van Munching)
• Yogesh Joshi, professor of marketing at the Smith School; and Balaji Padmanabhan, professor of decision, operations and information technologies at the Smith School, on early stage disruptive ideas (Room: 1202 Van Munching)
• Christoph Mergerson, assistant professor at Merrill College; and Alan Sealls, longtime television meteorologist and new president-elect of the American Meteorological Society, on monetizing weather news (Room: 1308 Van Munching)
• Daniel Trielli, assistant professor of media and democracy at Merrill College, on making local news more accessible to the public (Room: 1311 Van Munching)
• Ronald Yaros, associate professor of digital engagement at Merrill College, on revolutionizing the presentation of local news to maximize engagement (Room: 1206 Van Munching)