If you’ve ever held a copy of Baltimore Beat in your hands, you can thank Olu Butterfly, Leo Gray, his dad, Andrew Gray, Latoya Moore, and Michael Morstein.
Baltimore Beat prints 20,000 copies of our newspaper every two weeks. It’s up to our team of drivers to make sure those copies are distributed all over the city — to Beat Boxes, small businesses, coffee shops, and other locations. These five Baltimoreans have been with us since our relaunch in 2022.
One of our primary goals at Baltimore Beat is to enrich Baltimore’s community. We publish online and in print, always for free. That’s because we know that access to the news is not a luxury. Communities are strong when everyone knows what is going on.
What we didn’t anticipate when we made the decision to resume printing a newspaper was the community that would spring up around our delivery drivers and at the various spaces in the city that carry the paper.
Our drivers are assigned to different parts of the city and get to know neighborhoods and the people who live there. Our drivers can tell us when a business has closed or if a new one has opened. They can let us know if a Beat box needs repairing — and fix the box so it’s good as new.
Our drivers are important in building community and spreading the news. This video, shot and edited by Baltimore artist and videographer BZ, captures their work and why they do it.
“I like that I have to get out and walk around and talk to people,” said Olu Butterfly, who has been delivering papers for two years. “I feel that I’m actually giving people an alternative source of information that they may not have gotten elsewhere.”
We can’t continue the work we do without you. Please consider making a donation to Baltimore Beat today.
Looking for our printed newspaper? You can find it in multiple locations throughout the city that can be viewed within the interactive map below.