Emma Patti Looks Back on ’24 MTC Journey
“My class got so close. It’s one of the biggest things I value from the entire experience.”
January 30, 2025
2024 Fellow and Managing Editor Emma Patti, began her MTC Journey in January with the challenge of transforming her fledgling, city-centric startup to a more performance-oriented newsroom serving all of Maryland. In the final update on her participation in the yearlong program, Emma shares how the program’s tools, coaches, and cohort, helped her exceed her goals.
BW: You’ve got your certificate! How did you performance challenge turn out?
EP: It ended well for us; we crushed our goals. We originally budgeted 45,000 subscribers for the year which we had to re-forecast after we had a lot of big breaking news. So we moved our stretch goal to 55,000, which we hit on December 10th last year. We ended the year right around 57,000 subscribers.
When you’re trying to create a news organization where the ideal business model is 50% subscriber revenue, you really need a high growth of subscribers. And we did that. We had a 50% year-over-year growth and subscribers. It’s just huge.
And every part of the business contributed. It wasn’t just the journalism. It wasn’t just these discrete efforts. It was our incredible market marketing team and what they were thinking about on how to go to market. It was our product team and how to activate guest subscriptions. It was our sales team working on strategic partnerships. Everyone is thinking in the same way, and therefore we’re all working toward the same goals. (See “Banner Managing Editor Celebrates Wins”)
BW: And in the final days of your fellowship, you looked towards 2025…
EP: The next couple of years are going to be a continuance of my original challenge statement. My 2025 North Star is “The Baltimore Banner will go from an organization that serves Central Maryland to a news organization that begins to serve all of Maryland.” (See “How ‘Balcony View’ Helped Baltimore Banner Revise Its Mission”)
At the same time, we need to refine and perfect the current expansion strategies, making sure we’re doing what’s right in Baltimore, Howard, and Anne Arundel [counties], and making sure that we’re hitting all the topics that we need to.
I’m currently in the middle of a giant regional data analysis with our analytics team to look at what people are reading, and where their content affinities are in their counties – and outside of their counties – so we can align those interests with what we’re covering.
I’ve also been given the opportunity to oversee visual branding. I’m working closely with my Chief Revenue Officer on how to become more ingrained in and give back to the community – and how to get them involved in what we’re doing. And leveraging our reporters more as experts in their fields and get people to recognize them and be able to follow them as more individuals than just the whole brand.
I don’t think journalism is embracing influencer culture as much as it should. I believe that we need to be thinking of that more; these incredible humans in this building are smart, right, brilliant, and experts in their field, people need to know who they are.
It’s one of the biggest reasons why I wanted to hire Krishna [Sharma] and have our own TikTok. And now he goes into a coffee shop and immediately gets recognized. That’s the power of influencer culture.
People like to align with people. It’s more relatable. So if we can leverage that relationship to help them understand the brand, we’ll be doing a good job.
BW: Which MTC tools stuck?
EP: I love “From/To.” It made me think critically about where I am and where I want to go, not just personally, but in all aspects of my work. And it’s been a tool that I’ve been able to cascade to my teams. I’ve had a lot of my managers do From/To for themselves, so that they can also think critically about their own personal career growth.
DVP was probably the biggest one for me. I remember a moment when the coaches first introduced it. I was sitting there stewing a little bit, and I asked Amanda [Barrett], “What do you do if they don’t realize their own D?” And she said, “Make them uncomfortable.”
I took that to heart; sometimes you do have to make people uncomfortable so that they feel that D so that you can move forward. If you don’t have it, you can’t get to change.
We had vision and we had process, we had ideas out the wazoo, but so many people didn’t realize there was a problem. And until we recognized that we couldn’t move forward. And so that was that was a powerful tool for me personally.
BW: As you wrap up this portion of your MTC Journey, how do you assess your coaching relationship? And the bond among classmates?
EP: I didn’t know what quite to make of Danyelle when I first met her; she’s a little reserved. But once we got one on one, I realized that we are of the same mind, and we have such similarities in our roles. So it was a perfect match. We’re experiencing a lot of the same issues and challenges. And she’s just so wise and calm. She really helped keep me grounded and pushed me out of my own head.
She made me confront my own boundaries too. She said, “You can’t save the world by yourself.” That’s a hard thing to swallow when you’re a leader and you and you feel like you have to. So I’m so glad I embraced that. I feel much more empowered with my team behind me; I know that they’re bought into the vision.
I am surprised at how incredibly tight the cohort got. We were so skeptical of that first meeting. We were all like, “This is nuts. These people are insane.” But we really got so close. And honestly, it’s one of the biggest things I value from the entire experience.
Our WhatsApp is still blowing up. I love that. And I love that Darya [Ushakova] and Karen [Hawkins] saw each other at a party yesterday. And that Darya is hopping on a train [to Baltimore] in a couple of weeks; we’re going to do a little work and have dinner.
This experience is so bonding. You’re so linked by the end of it, because you’re so invested in every single project and every single person’s personal journey. (See “How Classmates Helped ’24 Fellow Manage Breaking News.”)
I hope that I never lose that with any of them because they’re all amazing humans. They’re lifelong friends.