A Banner Year (working title)
- Directed & Produced by: Josh Davidsburg
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- Updated: April 13, 2026
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City Hall Reporter
Participant
City Hall Reporter
Investigative Reporter
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Investigative Reporter
Investigative Team
Participant
Investigative Team
Director & Producer
Team
Director & Producer
Editor
Team
Editor
DP for Interviews
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DP for Interviews
Co-producer
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Co-producer
Assistant Editor
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Assistant Editor
additional cinematography, co-producer
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additional cinematography, co-producer
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Producer
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Narrative production independent creative team creative screenplay team producer team story. Editing narrative camera editing project cinema camera editing.
This section includes information about this project.
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Every week, two American newspapers shut their doors. Since 2005, the newspaper industry has lost more than 75% of its jobs across all roles, including reporters. While demagogues and oligarchs destroy our media landscape from the top down, hedge funds and private equity are devouring it from the ground up, leaving news deserts across the country. If democracy dies in darkness, that darkness is growing. But this documentary is about a new light shining brightly out of Baltimore. It’s a light that could be spread, replicated and has already started to disinfect. It’s a new nonprofit news organization called the Baltimore Banner, and some hail it as the most important experiment in journalism and democracy in our country right now.
For more than a year, our cameras got unfettered access to the journalists who are grinding away, helping the Banner establish itself. We followed the investigative team as they uncovered sexual abuse at a cult-like megachurch with international implications. We watch them empathetically convince victims and the family members to go on the record, meet sources in parking lots and argue with their editors and lawyers over word choice. We also follow the city hall reporter as she covers a nail-biting city election, running from debates, interviews, missing meals and working late into the night. She is one of the best at what she does, but as she prepares to start a family, the brunt of working at a startup and covering politics starts to become unbearable. This documentary will show how hard the work-life balance of a journalist is, while also showing how important it is. Meanwhile, the Banner goes from scrappy startup to Pulitzer Prize winner.
This documentary is my life's calling. My dad was a journalist for NBC, covering major events like Vietnam, the Six-Day War, and the Kent State shooting, and spent 30 years at Baltimore TV stations. My wife is also a journalist; she worked at the Annapolis Capital-Gazette and left a year before the tragic mass shooting. She now covers space for Mashable. I, too, have been a reporter and photojournalist, and now I teach college students how to become reporters. The American public must see how journalism is done, from the people who are doing it. This documentary does that, while at the same time showing what could be a path forward to save local journalism.
We are still raising money to finish post production, distribution and impact. We have a potential donor who has offered to match.
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