In the early 1800s, Thomas Jefferson was really into hating the press. (It hated him first.) As he put it, “Advertisements contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper.” Brutal.

That was in 1819, near the end of the great American newspaper boom. In the first decades of the 19th century, the number of newspapers in Maryland had exploded into the double digits, mimicking the rest of the country in the first years after the American revolution. The total number in the country rocketed from around a hundred just after the war to 1200 by 1835. Many if not most were also fiercely partisan: You read the news that conformed to your own views in, for example, the Republican; or Anti-Democrat, an actual newspaper that was most likely not widely read by Democrats.

The boom mirrors in a lot of ways the online boom of today: technology reaching saturation. (And you can be damn sure Belinda Conaway is hating the press right about now too; history repeats.) But instead of printing presses, it’s blogs and web sites. Right now, Baltimore has around eight steady sources of online news, far more than that depending on how you broaden the definition. Some are corporately fed, such as North Baltimore Patch, Charm City Current, Bmore Media, or Baltimore Examiner, and some are independent, such as the Baltimore Brew and Investigative Voice.

For six months, Baltimore was fortunate enough to have an organization here dedicated solely to analyzing the city’s journalistic output, NewsTrust Baltimore (the local pilot project of the larger NewsTrust organization). It was a bit like Yelp crossed with the Columbia Journalism Review. The project ceased operations on July 31 (it was always intended as a six-month pilot), leaving behind a collection of reports, one of which is a final comprehensive analysis of sorts. It eventually concludes, “The local news scene is in a state of flux with more than a little creative chaos. But patterns are emerging. As news startups and impassioned individuals become more rigorous and as traditional news organizations become more open and responsive to the public, there is a growing opportunity for collaboration across the local journalistic community.“

“Since the beginning, I’ve felt that Baltimore is a microcosm of what’s happening across larger media,” says Mary Hartney, the editor of NewsTrust Baltimore. (City Paper was a NewsTrust media partner.) “[It’s] probably ahead of the curve—other cities and other publications can look at Baltimore.” Which may seem like high praise for a city without an “ist” (Gothamist, DCist, etc.) site, but the city counters with sites such as the Baltimore Brew, which, if there was any justice, would be printed onto paper and distributed around the city in metal boxes.

“The Brew is a great example of what Baltimore has to offer as far as local online media,” Hartney says. “They seem to be filling some niche holes, and want to do more of that. They’ve amassed a big community, if you look at their comments. [The Brew is] one of my personal favorites, and I think what they’re doing is good journalism.”

The Brew makes up part of a wide spectrum. At one end, you’ll find things like corporately supported—however much a penny-a-pageview writer’s rate counts as support, in the Examiner’s case—community journalism (or “pro-am,” as it’s tagged sometimes) sites such as Charm City Current and the local Examiner cluster to the corporately supported and substantive Patch and Bmore Media to fierce, surging independents such as the Brew and Investigative Voice. The one-stop shopping of a single daily newspaper was never meant to last. “[The more] you broaden that spectrum,” Hartney adds, “the closer you’re going to get to having a [rounded] perspective. [We] encourage people to read widely and broadly.”

The problem from the beginning has been that no matter how necessary or vital an online outlet proves to be, no one but no one has figured out how to finance one. Money flows from AOL into the various area Patch sites (repped within city limits by North Baltimore Patch) for a full-time staffer and freelancers, but AOL doesn’t appear to have much of a money-making model in place for its chain of “hyperlocal” journalism sites. In other words, North Baltimore Patch and its kin could blink off the minute Arianna Huffington and company realize that they’re getting too deep into a dubious idea.

Patch is ultimately less of a question than sites like Investigative Voice and the Baltimore Brew, which exist without a corporate parent or perhaps even in spite of a corporate parent. (Both boast ex-Sun staffers in their ranks.) What does it take to survive? “Two things, money and readers,” Hartney, a former Sun staffer herself, answers. “The more readers you have, the more money you make. The next big step [for these sites] is finding ways to remain solvent online.

“[Baltimore] Fishbowl is experimenting with sponsored posts and columns,” she adds. “[The print-based] Urbanite does that too, I believe. That’s just one example. Revenue in the future is going to be about diversification. Keep writers paid, keep sites online. It’s going to be about experimentation with different revenue models over the next couple of years.”

Stephen Janis, a former Examiner (print version) reporter and City Paper contributing writer who went on to found Investigative Voice, recently took a position as the investigative producer for WBFF-TV, aka Fox45. He shares concerns about creating a sustainable future for the online news ecosystem. “The problem is that you have a very small amount of editorial resources so you’re only bringing in a very specialized audience,” he says. “You don’t have the mix of coverage of even like the City Paper. You end up with a specialized audience that’s very passionate—like ours was—but is very small. How are you supposed to monetize that? I can’t speak for Baltimore Brew, but being relevant as a business—like City Paper or Fox45—we’re a ways from that.”

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