Community Impact (CI) was established in 2005 and is privately owned by its co-founders, John and Jennifer Garrett. It started rather modestly—in the game room of its co-founder’s house—as a hyperlocal newspaper serving residents of a small area, Round Rock/Pflugerville, Texas. Today, it offers multiple print and digital products, including monthly print newspapers and daily newsletters, which they say provide their most important distribution channels. In an era where local papers are diminishing across the U.S., creating news deserts, Community Impact thrives as one of the fastest-growing media companies by offering its products for free online and in print.
“What’s the secret to their success?” you may ask yourself. I asked that very question to Kelly Outlaw, Community Impact’s President, who has been an executive leader for over a decade.
“‘Print Ain’t Dead,’ is a very local, Texas thing to say but it is at the core of our business model. We have a multitude of digital products in our portfolio, but print advertising makes up 90% of our revenue because it works. Our hyperlocal approach to our markets translates into real value to our advertisers. Instead of paying a premium for zip code targeted digital advertising, if you choose to advertise in one of our papers, ALL residents in proximity to your business are receiving your ad,” says Kelly.
CI’s portfolio includes more than 40 editions of hyperlocal, monthly print newspapers and 40 editions of daily newsletters. The newspaper is delivered through USPS to all households in its circulation area and reaches more than 2.5 million mailboxes across Texas.
Local residents and business owners are Community Impact’s most important stakeholders. CI newspapers are reportedly read cover to cover, offering local residents crucial information about transportation and road projects, development, education, healthcare, and government. While big national publishers don’t have reporters in every locale, CI’s reporters are truly embedded in the communities—they attend every city council or school board meeting in every city CI covers.
Another backbone of CI’s success is local business. CI has not only found a way to bring advertisers back to media publishing but has also built an in-house customer relationship management (CRM) system that allows businesses to target customers in a way that competes with the targeted advertising of tech platforms.
“Our fastest growing product, CI 360, is a holistic approach to advertising for our clients. Research shows that consumers need to see an ad multiple times before they act. This product combines Print, CI.com web, programmatic, and a product we call Storytelling (an editorial approach to a business owner’s story, their differentiator). By having the same ad across multiple devices and mediums, consumers are more likely to act”, says Kelly.
CI controls its distribution by delivering directly to mailboxes via USPS, but in 2016, they also built their own printing plant “since the existing external printing company could not satisfy our demands anymore,” Kelly explains.
Ninety percent of their revenue comes from print, with the remaining share from digital. A small portion of revenue comes from readers through the Community Impact Patron program. While that program is modest—covering roughly three journalists’ salaries annually—CI plans to expand its reader revenue program in the future.
“We are unique in the industry. In 2024, we grew both total and print revenue, expanded into new markets, and were profitable. In our world, that is the trifecta. We are opening three markets this year, and hope to continue at this pace for the foreseeable future,” she says. “Texas is REALLY big.”
CI prides itself on being trusted news that everyone gets, regardless of political affiliation or socioeconomic status. I wondered how this plays out in a heavily polarized society like the United States today. “We are unapologetically unbiased,” says Kelly, adding: “We don’t do social issues, and we don’t do opinion pieces.” Still, navigating this landscape requires some deliberation within the newsroom.
“School board meetings have become heavily politically polarized recently. Even the founder and I are sometimes involved in some of these discussions with our leadership team. We challenge each other to ensure there is no unconscious bias coming through our reporting. We even go as far as to make sure quotes, photos, and statistics that could be seen as political are evenly balanced and vary in order. We want to report only the facts, and allow our readers to form their own opinions.”
Community Impact has a staff of more than 200, with a strong journalism team of approximately 70 and an equally strong sales team of about 60 people. Apart from CI headquarters in Pflugerville, TX, they also have three other local offices spread across Texas, and multiple local teams broken up by location. Each team includes at least one reporter, editor, and sales representative per area. Their sales and journalism teams work independently—“because we don’t mix the two,” explains Kelly, “not to jeopardize their journalistic integrity.”
Kelly’s leadership approach is centered around the needs of employees. At a time when newsrooms globally struggle to attract and retain talent, CI offers key benefits: “Obviously, we can’t compete with tech salaries, but we attract talent through our internship program with journalism university programs and later offer a 401k program, top of the line health insurance benefits and a robust time-off policy.”