How to Build Community, Inside the Box with Lisa Snowden
About This Episode
What happens when a community refuses to let its story be told from the outside in? In this conversation, Carrie Fox sits down with Lisa Snowden, Editor-in-Chief of Baltimore Beat, to explore what it means to build journalism as a thriving business model and an act of community care. Born out of the ashes of the Baltimore City Paper and shaped by the unrest following Freddie Gray’s death, Baltimore Beat has never been about neutrality—it has been about presence, about listening, and about amplifying voices too often ignored.
Lisa traces her journey from courtroom reporter to newsroom leader, revealing how perspective and personal truth can reshape the role of journalism itself. She describes the radical choices that have guided the Beat: shifting from for-profit to nonprofit after early financial collapse, accepting a transformative million-dollar grant at the height of the pandemic, and creating “beat boxes” that don’t just hold newspapers but double as neighborhood resource hubs. Inside those boxes, you’ll now find Narcan, notebooks, water bottles, or even hand warmers—small objects that together become an expression of community solidarity.
Even the act of delivering the paper has become something larger than distribution. By replacing outside delivery contractors with local community members—drivers who know every street and corner—the Beat stumbled into a model of journalism that is participatory, intimate, and trusted. Today, those same drivers are welcomed by shopkeepers and seniors waiting for the latest issue, reinforcing a sense of belonging that no algorithm or national newsroom can replicate.
What emerges from Lisa’s story is a portrait of local journalism as a lifeline. In her telling, journalism cannot be sterile or detached. It must be human. It must show up. And in the Beat’s case, it must be willing to save lives, as when a box outside their office provided the Narcan that brought a neighbor back from an overdose. This is the work of journalism that doesn’t just inform a city—it sustains it. And it is proof that local news is not dying, but thrives in reinventing itself as the heartbeat of a community.
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Carrie Fox:
Hi, and thanks for joining us for this episode of the Mission Forward Podcast. I am so glad to be with you, right where you are, wherever that is right now, listening to this show about presence and community. As you know, we are in the early stages of this 11th season, in which we are talking about hellos, goodbyes, and that space between. That space where we can be present with each other, with our family, with our coworkers, and with our neighbors. And today's guest is someone who practices this really well. And the local newsroom that she runs, well, they practice it really well too. We are talking with Lisa Snowden, editor-in-chief of Baltimore Beat, and one of the great minds behind this newsroom's radical focus on community first. You might recall that I wrote about Baltimore Beat earlier this summer, and their beat boxes, which bridge community in a brilliant way. We're going to talk about that, about how to bridge community, how to bring people together, and why, from Lisa's perspective, local news is not dying, but is the heartbeat of a strong community. Lisa, welcome to Mission Forward.
Lisa Snowden:
Thank you so much. Thank you for such a beautiful introduction.
Carrie Fox:
My pleasure. I'm so thrilled to have you here. So I've got to ask you, right? You are a journalist, so I know you have got a fair share of good stories to tell. But I'm going to start by having you tell us one of yours. So take me back, if you can, to the beginnings of Baltimore Beat, right? When it was just an idea. And I have heard that you set out to build something different in the Beat from the ground up. So tell me a little bit about that vision and what inspired it.
Lisa Snowden:
Sure. So the Baltimore Beat came out of the death of Baltimore City Paper. That was an alt weekly that was in Baltimore City for around 40 years. It's actually, yeah, 40 years exactly. And I was hired toward the end of its run. I was also hired post the death of Freddie Gray. And if you don't recall, about ten years ago, Freddie Gray was a young Black man in Baltimore City. Police picked him up, threw him in a police van. He was severely injured, ended up dying from those injuries, and that set off unrest in the city of Baltimore. The staff at Baltimore City Paper was really interested in telling a story from the ground up, from telling it from the real people on the streets, especially thinking about the people that are most affected, which is Black Baltimoreans. At the same time, they realized while they were trying to do this work, they looked around at themselves at the staff and were like, "Hey, we're trying to tell this, and we don't even really represent Baltimore. We're mostly white staff." So they did their best at that time. When they got a chance to hire, make a new hire, they asked me to come on as, I think, just a news reporter. At that point I was a freelance writer. I was mostly home with my kids and was freelancing also. They brought me on and we really started talking a lot about again serving Baltimore's community, thinking about the unique needs of a Black community, and also just the ways that journalism can both help and harm communities.
When I got there, those officers that had been in, you know, had apprehended Freddie Gray, those officers were going to trial, and my editor at the time, Karen Hooper, asked me to cover those trials. And at first I was kind of like, "I'm not—I'm kind of a general assignment reporter. I'm not a courts reporter. Courts reporters, that's their beat. They already know the folks at the courthouse. They know how this all works. That's not me." And Karen said, "That's fine. We have other, you know, there'll be other newsrooms there. The New York Times, the Baltimore Sun that can do kind of that court reporting, daily beat." She said, "I want you to more write about your experiences and reflections being in that courtroom."
So I ended up writing pieces that kind of talked about—for example, one of the things that one of the officers' defense talked about in court was that, you know, they had to throw him in the van in the way that they did because there was just this scary, violent crowd and the situation was out of control. And one of the things that I wrote about was that Freddie, like, people knew him in his community. So when he was crying out in pain, people went and wanted to know what was going on. That happens in any community, anywhere on this planet. But because this is a poor Black community, them being human is demonized and almost used as justification. People said, you know, the lawyers on the—defending the officers said not to say he caused his own death, but... And to me, that was just a crazy thing to hear. So I wrote pieces kind of about perception and how perception is really what determines our lives in this country.
So that stuff happened. I think we did a lot of good work. We were really excited about the work we were doing. And we got the call from the Baltimore Sun's ownership—we were owned by the Baltimore Sun—that they were ending the paper. There was a lot of outcry from the community. People still wanted a voice like the City Paper. They liked The Sun. The Sun was kind of, you know, standard traditional news, but they also liked that alternative voice that was more skeptical of power, more kind of casual and approachable, also much more deeply rooted in the city's arts and culture scene, which Baltimore has an amazing arts and culture scene. That was still something that people wanted and needed. People approached Brandon Soderbergh, who was our editor-in-chief at the time, wanted to figure out how to buy a City Paper or start something new. The Sun would not allow the name to be purchased. Brandon found a publisher who lived in Baltimore but worked in DC and said, "Okay, well, I'm already publishing elsewhere in DC. But I love Baltimore and I want to help you start something else." And that's how the Baltimore Beat was born.
Carrie Fox:
What a transformative set of experiences, it sounds like, for the city as we know, and for you personally. To be a reporter—was that tough for you to be told to go in and write about perspective in a way that was, it was impossible for that, I'm sure, not to be deeply personal as you're sitting there listening?
Lisa Snowden:
Yeah, I mean I wrote about how Freddie Gray could have been—you know, I have—I'm from Annapolis, which is about forty-five minutes from Baltimore, but I have cousins and family in Baltimore. He could have been my cousin. He could have been my nephew. So it's impossible to not feel that tie. And that's something else that I've talked about with journalism. Journalism has kind of been taught as this neutral, sterile thing, and it can't be for me, but it's also not for anyone. We are all humans. Journalism at its root is storytelling and what we bring ourselves to whatever stories we tell.
Carrie Fox:
When that idea was presented of "let's start something new," did you have trepidation? Did you have excitement? What was the feeling that you had?
Lisa Snowden:
Well, it's interesting because the Baltimore Sun, when they ended City Paper, they kept me on staff for a while. They moved me over to the Sun, to the editorial side. I was on the Sun's editorial board. So that meant that I contributed to kind of the Sun's editorial statements collectively and also wrote my own op-eds. So I was working there. Brandon was working trying to figure out how to keep that, you know, alternative voice going. He had found the publisher. He came to me and was like, "Hey, Lisa." Brandon's a white man. He said, "You know, I could be the editor-in-chief of this thing, but I think there's enough white guys in journalism. Would you be interested in being the editor-in-chief?"
And that was shocking to me because I had never considered a leadership position. I'd always thought of myself as a journalist. I thought eventually I would, you know, have a beat or I'd figure out what my lane was and I would work for someone else always. And that was fine. Maybe write some books, but never have a leadership role in that way. And when he brought that to me, he gave me some time to think about it. And I thought about it and I thought about how white journalism is. There's not many places in the United States that are led by Black women, Black people, but especially Black women. And so I felt like I kind of owed it to myself to at least try. I had never been in a leadership position in a newsroom, but I wanted to try. So I told him, you know, "Yes, I will, I will try and we'll figure this out together."
Carrie Fox:
Oh, and you've done more than try. I mean, this is an incredible living thing that you have created and brought to your community, and that is not a one-way newsroom. It is deeply entrenched in community and two-way conversation. And so tell me a little bit about that. It was "okay, here is this opportunity to start something new," but this wasn't a "let's go recreate what City Paper was." You intentionally did some things a little bit different and have done some things different in terms of that connection to the community and what to me feels like a really deep intentional focus on building and maintaining trust with your community.
Lisa Snowden:
Yeah, so I've been able to really sharpen my vision over the years. So we started as a for-profit publication, just like most newspapers, making money through ad sales and things like that. And eventually, after five months, our publisher backed out and said, "Sorry, I don't have any more money. I can't do this thing." We reinvented the Beat a year later as a nonprofit. Then in 2020, a family foundation, a white family foundation, approached us and said, "At this moment in 2020, when the pandemic is happening and disproportionately affecting the health of Black Americans, as people are out on the streets protesting the death of George Floyd, we feel called to do more. We feel like, you know, we have this foundation. We've been giving out small piecemeal grants. We think that that doesn't do enough to address the harms that Black communities are facing. We want to give everything." So they gave us a million dollars.
And that, I think that money coming at a time that was so pivotal made me get really serious about what people needed, what people wanted, and also the ways that journalism as a whole was failing us. One of those ways was the beat boxes. I'm sure we'll talk about those more, but those boxes started popping up around that time more, because folks were losing their jobs because of the pandemic. So there were these community pantries and things like that popping up around the city. I saw—I saw the ways that information was not getting to people. Not just me, our team saw that. There were people that didn't know basic information about the pandemic. When you think about the race factor and George Floyd, you know, this is a matter of life and death, and it always has been. But I didn't see journalism meeting the needs and really telling the story of what was happening with that.
So it was really like this convergence, I think, in 2020 that made us say, like, "We've been kind of complaining and talking a lot about the way that journalism doesn't quite fit the needs of a lot of people. This is a time where we really are seeing they have real world effects of that failure. And now that we have this money, we can really try to do something about it." I don't think we can exist as a healthy society if everybody is not included in the conversation. We can't—the way that I was taught journalism was kind of a top-down approach. You know, the reporter goes wherever, talks to the person, goes back to their newsroom and spits it back out to the community. That's to me already has been slowly not working. We are in an emergency right now and we have to talk to people like on a person-to-person basis. We can't think of it as mass communication. It has to start with small conversations and build to a greater thing. I feel like I'm a little bit rambling. I hope I'm not, but that's that's...
Carrie Fox:
You are not. You are not. Like this is the message that literally everyone listening needs to hear because it transcends actually people who run newsrooms. What you are talking about is inherently the basis of community building. And there were two things I want you to talk about. Two, I'm going to call them strategies, but they are so much more than that. And it's the way you think about your drivers and the role that they play in that listening process and the beat boxes. And I'm not sure which one happened first. Your community drivers or the beat boxes?
Lisa Snowden:
The boxes happened first. So we knew—so also City Paper always had kind of these iconic bright yellow boxes all around the city. City Paper was a weekly paper. When it came out, everybody knew to find those yellow boxes and get your paper. So we both, when we got that money, we wanted to honor that. And then also bring something else because again we were like, "We have to do more. We have to show up more. Just giving people a well-written story is not enough. There's so much great journalism happening that does not pierce the veil of like regular people and creating change."
So we thought about those boxes. We reached out to OpenWorks, which is a community maker space here in Baltimore. They helped us kind of figure out what those boxes would be, and those were in production. Then we were like, "Okay, we have this paper that we've told everybody is going to come out. How are we going to get it to everybody?" In our first iteration, we had drivers. We just used like a driver company. We never saw them. They delivered the paper and we would always get complaints from people that were like they weren't getting the paper. We would tell the drivers, "Okay, you guys are missing this place or that place." The drivers would be like, "Uh-huh, whatever." And they just consistently—it was a problem. So we knew it had to be something a little bit more homegrown.
And so we reached out to Easy Jackson, who now is our director of outreach. Easy Jackson's born and raised in Baltimore City, knows the city like the back of his hand. Like you say an address, he knows exactly where that is. Also because he's been such a—he's also been an organizer in Baltimore. So he's literally door knocked all over the city. So we brought him on and we said, "Okay, we're going to try to build this thing where we deliver our own papers." We put out a call and said, you know, "This isn't a lot of money, but if anybody's looking for a few extra dollars, we can pay you to pick up the papers and deliver them all across Baltimore every other week."
We did not expect it to be a community-building thing. Like that was a beautiful surprise. We launched August tenth, 2022, and that first Wednesday we started seeing on Instagram all these different small businesses—because it's not just the boxes that get the papers. There's also coffee shops, small businesses, hospitals, community resource centers, they all get drop offs of the paper too. All these people posting on Instagram, "We have the Beat. We have the Beat." And then we're sharing these. And we're noticing that people want the paper and they're like, "I've never—I lived down the street from this coffee shop," which is like a small, you know, mom and pop coffee shop. "I've never been inside. I've never been in this space. I didn't know that this space existed in my community." And that was just such a beautiful thing. To see it was not planned at all. We thought the community building was going to mostly come from the boxes or the content of the paper.
We have the same team of drivers three years later. All of—no one's left. They're all still very committed and they tell us about how now, you know, the owners of shops will wait for them and say, "Oh my gosh, I'm so happy that you're here." When they drop them off at community centers or—I think there's some elderly high rises that we drop the paper off—they look for the community resource guide that we put in every issue. So they're excited to get the paper. And so it's just like—again, it's just something we did not plan, but it's been another way of making sure that we really show up in the community.
Carrie Fox:
Right? Yeah. And sometimes the best ideas are just that, right? I mean you couldn't have predicted the outcome, but what I love about this story, particularly at a time when I—I mentioned this in the piece I wrote too, right? When the paper boy is essentially extinct. There's no such thing anymore. That a simple act really of you knew you needed to deliver the paper and so how to deliver the paper by simply extending an arm just a little further into the community and the impact that that would have is remarkable. And so it didn't—I am sure it didn't require the vast majority of that million dollars to make that happen, but the impact that that had far outweighs, right, the cost that it that you take on to do that. I love, I just, just love how you do that.
The beat boxes. One more thing I want you to stress about the beat boxes is not only are they hearkening back to the City Paper boxes, but there is something unique in how they're built. There's kind of a top shelf as I understand. Tell me a little bit about that.
Lisa Snowden:
So they both have—if you just walk up to the box and open kind of the front door, that's how you pick the paper up. If you lift the lid, there's a compartment where you can drop things off or pick things up. So we've had people kind of adopt these boxes in different communities around the city and they've left things like water bottles, COVID tests, feminine hygiene products. Recently someone stocked a box, took a picture and tagged us on Instagram, and it was right before school started. So they put some composition notebooks and pens and erasers and colored pencils and things like that. So just different things that people need in the community, they can leave for them. In the winter, people will put hand warmers in there.
And again, I think that it feels very corny to say, but I do think that people are intrinsically good. It feels especially crazy to say that at this political moment, it feels very Pollyanna-ish, but I do think that. But I think that we have to make it easy for people to be good. And for us, it's a small way of helping one another.
Thing that we did not expect but has been so really meeting this moment is I knew from the beginning that I wanted to have Narcan in our boxes and drug testing strips. We didn't have the capacity to do that because this is a thing that we are definitely still building until this year. So we partnered with an organization called Baltimore Harm Reduction. And all the boxes have Narcan and drug testing strips now. And that matters because you know, there's been reporting from the Baltimore Banner, another nonprofit news outlet here, about the increase in overdose deaths. That's still a major issue. And so that's a way that those are there.
And also, our director of outreach, Easy Jackson, has had to actually use that on someone who was overdosing. We work out of an office near downtown Baltimore, near City Hall. One day we're in there working and somebody who worked in that office came running in and he was like, "Somebody is overdosing outside, like right now." And we have a box right outside of our office. So Easy ran downstairs, grabbed the Narcan, administered it to the man, and he was brought out of that overdose. At the beginning of the year, I didn't think, you know, that that would be something that it would be a spotlight on Baltimore Beat. Like that's a major issue right now in Baltimore. After the Banner's reporting, you know, it's something that city leaders have been having a lot of conversation, like "How do we address this in a better way?" But because we were already positioned to meet that moment, we've already been able to support.
Carrie Fox:
Talk about meeting a moment. I mean, this is so much more—you and I started by talking about a community newspaper, which it is, I mean it is truly a life-saving service on so many levels as you think about how you're bridging community. And it strikes me that it all started from the response to and the experience of Freddie Gray's death, a highly politically charged experience in Baltimore. And I am certain in that moment, going back to that moment and that courtroom, it probably was really hard to imagine the future of what Baltimore could be as a place where community was coming together. And the role that you and your colleagues have played at the Baltimore Beat just should not be undervalued or dismissed because it's a critical part of how your community has been building and strengthening and tightening those bonds that are there inside your community.
Lisa Snowden:
And I mean, in some ways, it's just echoing what the city already is. Baltimore has always been kind of an underdog. You know, we weren't—we were like DC's less fancy cousin. And so we've never been as resourced as some other bigger cities. And so folks have always had to rely on community. So again, it's like that was already there. We didn't invent that. Baltimore is a deeply community-knit city. It's just helping that, supporting what already existed.
Carrie Fox:
I love that, right? There was so much already innately in the city. All right, time for two more questions. So I said it at the top and I'll say it again. I mean clearly people think and some data will show it that local news is dying. You say the opposite. So tell me why. Tell me what you see in Baltimore that proves local news isn't dying, but it's the heart of a community.
Lisa Snowden:
Local news as we know it is dying. But there's so much potential there. I think the news, the way that I was taught about news, is that it's this thing, local news is something that feeds the larger, you know, national news. And national news is the best. The idea is that maybe you started a small newspaper and eventually you make it to New York or LA or DC. I think that is dying. And I think that that's good because it did not work and it did not serve communities. That's not how our nation works. Our nation works in small communities first. And so I think there's so much potential right now in local news.
I also get very frustrated because we're so small. I wish that I had assistants. I wish that we had a larger newsroom. Right now we have a managing editor. We have an arts and culture editor. We did have a news editor, but we promoted her to a managing editor. And we have Easy Jackson, the director of outreach. We have a team of drivers, we have a team of steady freelancers. That's it. We could get so much more done if we had a bigger staff. But having a smaller staff means that you really have to be focused on the details. And I really think about how being uncomfortable right now, because it is uncomfortable, to be—you know, I get sick and I miss like two weeks of emails and I'm still trying to fight back. But it makes you really look at the small details and build towards the future. I'm not always going to be as under-resourced as I am. We're not always going to be as a nation in this time of crisis. That's what happens. But are we prepared for when this time of crisis is over, to have the thing that needs to happen then built and running for that world?
And so I feel like, yes, what we know of news is dying. It first started with small newsrooms, but now it's, you know, giant ones like CNN and MSNBC. They talk about—you know, we see that they're losing audience, but there's so much that can be built in that space. I'm talking to you right now from a convening of Black women who run small newsrooms in Detroit, in Memphis, in—where else? Indiana. And we're all—we're all talking and huddling and figuring out how we build to the future. Those conversations are happening among many people, among queer journalists, among Indigenous journalists. So all of these things are happening. There's another world coming. And for me it feels really good to be part of that.
Carrie Fox:
Good, good. So tell the folks who are listening how they can become part of it too. How can they support Baltimore Beat or some of the other newsrooms that you just mentioned?
Lisa Snowden:
To support a large community of this—of nonprofit news, because there is a community, look for organizations like LION, Local Independent Online News, also INN, Institute of Nonprofit News. For the Beat, please—we're at BaltimoreBeat.com. Please read our work. Please share our work. Sign up for our newsletter. We are looking for small donors and large donors. One of the things that kind of happens and why we're so small is that it's still hard to convince folks that news that's thinking first of Black folks, of marginalized folks, of Black folks, non-native folks, poor folks, it's hard to get that funded. And that's just true across nonprofit world. It's also hard for nonprofits run by people who look like me. So we are working at a deficit when it comes to money. We've been very blessed to have the support of some large donors like the Ford Foundation, the Democracy Fund, but we really need a lot more to sustain ourselves into the future.
Carrie Fox:
For those who are listening, if you were moved by this conversation as I was, BaltimoreBeat.com, become a member, small donation, large donation, it all matters to invest in this deeply community-driven idea and experience and service that is critically important, particularly in the world that we live in right now. So here's our little closing, and this is just for you, Lisa, as we're getting to know everyone who's showing up on the show this season. A couple rapid fire questions for you.
Lisa Snowden:
Okay.
Carrie Fox:
So, since this is about hellos, goodbyes, and the space between, do you say hello with a hug or a handshake?
Lisa Snowden:
I would love to hug, but also not everybody's a hugger. So I take their temperature. If they want a hug, then I'll give a hug. If a handshake's better, then I'll do that.
Carrie Fox:
What's your favorite language or way to say hello?
Lisa Snowden:
That's a really good question. I think by genuinely asking how people are. I feel like we—some people say it just kind of like it's interchangeable with hello, but I really want to know, like, how are you? I think sometimes people talk to me and they just want to start asking me stuff. So it means something to me when folks are like, "How are you really? How are your kids? Like, how are your parents?"
Carrie Fox:
What's something you never leave home without?
Lisa Snowden:
My cell phone, unfortunately. There's no way that I could function without it.
Carrie Fox:
Pretty sure that answer will win this season.
Lisa Snowden:
Yes.
Carrie Fox:
And finally, to take us home in this big game of life, what is one thing you hope to leave behind?
Lisa Snowden:
The Baltimore Beat in a better capacity. Like, there's so much work that I know that I will not even get to. I feel like my job is creating a very strong foundation so that the next person, who I really hope is a person born and raised in Baltimore City, has kind of the opportunity to soar even further than we ever could.
Carrie Fox:
Lisa, it was so amazing to get some time with you today. I feel this kind of full-body experience listening to you of what you've built and the vision you have is both so big and so real, right? And you are achieving it every day in how your newsroom operates. So thank you for sharing some of that with us, particularly while you are on site with some of your colleagues. I appreciate you giving some time.
Lisa Snowden:
Thank you for seeing our work because like I said, not everybody unfortunately sees the value of it. So it really means a lot that you do.
Carrie Fox:
Happy to. All right. Well thanks and we'll talk with you soon.
Lisa Snowden:
Thank you.
Carrie Fox:
And that brings us to the end of another episode of the Mission Forward Podcast. What Lisa and her team are doing is the antidote to all of the divisiveness and the challenges that our country is facing in this moment. If you are looking for ways to build community, listen to this episode again. The solutions are right in front of you. If something about this show is sticking with you, I hope you will let me know. And remember this, wherever you're going, wherever you've been, and wherever you are right now, make the most of it. And I'll see you here next time on the Mission Forward Podcast.
