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Meet Ricardo Baca of Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency in Baker Neighborhood

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Today we’d like to introduce you to Ricardo Baca.

Thanks for sharing your story with us Ricardo. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
I’m a Colorado native, born and raised in Denver. Graduated high school from Westminster High and graduated college from Metropolitan State University with degrees in journalism and theater – and a lengthy, four-year internship at the Rocky Mountain News (RIP). My first job out of school was at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times, where I worked on the entertainment pages – covering art and music before being appointed the newspaper’s TV Critic. I was hired back in my hometown of Denver three years later by The Denver Post, where I wrote about music and was eventually promoted to the Pop Music Critic position. I started a music blog, Reverb, which later was transitioned into the newspaper’s entertainment site, The Know. I co-founded music festival The UMS (The Underground Music Showcase) with my colleague John Moore, then the newspaper’s theater critic – and The UMS is still one of the best weekends of the year in Denver each July.

I was later promoted as Entertainment Editor at the newspaper, where I managed a team of 10-plus reporters and critics – and in November 2013, I was appointed the paper’s first-ever Marijuana Editor. I was challenged to cover the soon-to-be-legal cannabis industry from all angles, news and features and criticism and investigations – all on a standalone site that was related to The Post but separate. We called the site The Cannabist, and before long, our journalism – fueled by my small but growing staff as well as the many contributions of my colleagues at The Post – was luring more eyeballs than High Times and Marijuana.com. We helped bring real journalism to cover the cannabis industry, and we held the industry accountable while also holding the regulators and prohibitionists accountable. It was exhilarating, and we eventually grew The Cannabist’s staff to seven full-timers – before I resigned from The Post in December 2016 to found a new agency concept I’d been dreaming of.

You see, for the decade before leaving The Post, I was observing the PR professionals I worked with on a daily basis. I noticed what they did well and how they excelled at helping me as a reporter, but more often than not, I noticed where they dropped the ball, where they misled me, where they failed their clients, where they lost my trust. I knew I was going to create a different kind of agency concept after my time in daily newspaper journalism was done, but I didn’t know what it was going to look like exactly. And so after leaving The Post and signing my first client, I did my due diligence, talking with friends and colleagues that had worked with PR and marketing agencies in the past and asking them what they liked about their partners – and what they disliked. I heard so many horror stories about overpromising and underdelivering and unfathomable communication mishaps (especially for alleged professionals working in the comms industry) that I started to recognize how I could create a different kind of agency. I thought to myself, “Grasslands could be a journalism-minded agency, where we communicate clearly and act with accountability and manage expectations and never promise on what we can’t deliver on.”

At first, “journalism-minded agency” was just a thought starter. But then it became part of our name. Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency. Journalism informs everything we do, from the relationships we build and maintain with our partners in the media to the seriousness we employ with our clients PR, thought leadership and content marketing needs. Today we have a staff of 12 full-timers and we work with clients in tech, cannabis, real estate, hemp, government and traditional healthcare. In late-September, we bought an old nightclub/brothel in Baker on 1st and Santa Fe, and we’re in the process of renovating it into our world headquarters. Our clients include Willie Nelson’s cannabis brands (Willie’s Reserve and Willie’s Remedy included), Medicine Man Technologies, Coda Signature, The Clear, Spherex, Next Big Crop, the National Cannabis Industry Association and other leading brands/organizations.

Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Lots of obstacles and challenges, for sure. Cannabis businesses face unfair challenges every day in the form of their lack of access to traditional banking services (including basic loans), the undue tax burden they carry (because of IRS code 280E) and their ineligibility for emergency SBA loans (including EIDL and PPP) – and so we stand with our clients, as they deserve to be treated like any other business or industry. That said, this new era defined by the novel coronavirus is obviously a huge challenge for all industries – and that very much includes marketing, which is oftentimes among the first expenses to be cut, and cannabis, which remains federally illegal. For Grasslands’ book of business, we have certainly lost clients in the last few weeks – and we will lose some more. All of them are telling us they’ll be back when things return to normal, and we will be here for them.

We’re also working with brands that are doubling down on PR and marketing in these challenging times, recognizing that their competitors are pulling back on their marketing spends – and that now is a good time for them to step up and be seen, especially since their target customers are spending more time on screens than ever before. For our cannabis clients, the last few weeks have been all over the place with cities and states closing and reopening dispensaries – and with most governments ultimately recognizing that cannabis dispensaries are essential businesses. And when you think about it, these are historic times – with governments finally recognizing that cannabis is medicine and that access to medicine needs to be guaranteed amid this pandemic.

I’ve written a couple op-eds about this historic situation, asking mayors and governors and other elected officials to recognize that patient access needs to be protected. Including this piece for Westword, Denver’s alt-weekly; https://www.westword.com/marijuana/dear-denver-mayor-michael-hancock-all-dispensaries-are-essential-11673235 My colleagues and I are ready for the challenges ahead, and it helps that we recognize the importance of our work. Brands need to be communicating with all stakeholders now, and Grasslands helps them manage that messaging – and get the word out to the masses.

Most proud of: We set out to become a different kind of strategic PR and marketing agency, one that is more honest and transparent in its client relationships, and we have executed on that promise every day. And we also approach each new day looking to how we can be better partners to our friends and colleagues in the media and to our clients, who do the kind of work that deserves to be celebrated.

What sets us apart: You’ll find that no other business in the world calls themselves “journalism-minded.” We actually now own the trademark (via the United States Patent and Trademark Office) on “journalism-minded agency.” More on what it means to be a journalism-minded agency here: https://mygrasslands.com/who-we-are/

If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I’ve made a lot of mistakes in the last three and a half years since leaving The Post and starting Grasslands (by myself and with no investment). But that was always inevitable, right? I appreciate the startup school of failing – and embracing those failures as the most valuable learning opportunities you’ll have as an entrepreneur. I do my best to attend Denver Startup Week’s #FailFest panels each year, as these stories of failures are often universal stories of growth – and I’m thankful for the opportunity to learn from them, so I (hopefully) don’t repeat the same mistakes.

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Photos courtesy of Grasslands: A Journalism-Minded Agency

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