John Garrett, founder of Community Impact, closed out the first full day of the Mega-Conference encouraging publishers to go back to the basics. “This is not rocket science,” he said, adding that it all starts at the top of the triangle. “It starts with quality journalism and quality design.”
As a hyper-local community publication, Community Impact focuses on high-quality journalism, complete with infographics, maps and stories about things going on in the local area.
Its publications are designed to be local business journals that are mailed free to everyone. “The data is very clear,” he said. “Sixty to 80 percent of every market we serve says Community Impact is the number one source of news for them. And, that's not our data. That's a multitude of other outside data.”
By mailing it free to everyone in the community, advertiser support follows. He said this allows them to invest more in journalism and to hire more reporters.
Investing in talent throughout the company is key, he said. Garrett shared his “LIAR” hiring system for identifying A-players that he developed during his earlier days working at the Austin Business Journal where he served in his first management role. LIAR stands for Likable, Intelligent, Achievement-Oriented and Responsible.
He said success also comes from the fact that Community Impact is a values-driven organization that is focused on:
“You can't fake it,” Garrett said. “It's got to be real.” He added: “All of our people are encouraged to share these values and to live them out in their work.”
Community Impact's core coverage focuses on business (new openings, anniversaries and changes), development (major community projects and real estate), education (the business of local school districts), local government (city council and statewide updates), transportation (road improvement timelines and funding) and healthcare (data, innovations and resources). Sports, he pointed out, isn't something Community Impact covers. Additional topics — when they overlap with core coverage pillars — include the environment, public safety issues, community issues that significantly affect readers, as well as breaking news.
One of the things that Garrett said he is most proud of is the way that Community Impact bundles its marketing packages to sell long-term contracts to advertisers instead of one-off advertising deals. He said advertisers continue to prefer the print product over digital options, and sponsored content in its popular local emailed newsletter also is popular with local businesses.
He encouraged publishers to take a good look at their rate cards and simplify them to ensure that their pricing structures are easy to understand. Proving ROI (Return on Impact) also is important at Community Impact. “People gets results from Community Impact and we prove it every month in what we call a monthly ROI report. We want to show our advertisers that advertising and Community Impact works. And, you've got to do that with data.”
Garrett also talked about where he sees technology taking Community Impact in the future. While there is concern about disruption that AI may cause in the newspaper industry, Garrett said he views AI as a new tool in its belt. “I really believe that AI is a chance for our industry to do incredible things that we simply could not have done before,” he said.
He said AI is removing the technology gap between the Big Tech companies and companies like Community Impact. He said one person can now build, using Claude Code, what used to require a whole development team. “It's a remarkable time for our industry to step up,” he said, adding that AI is empowering his staff — not replacing them. He challenged Mega-Conference attendees to log into Claude Code to experiment with AI capabilities, if they have not already done so.
“Find your champions in your organization,” he said, noting that he now has a number of people at Community Impact who are using Claude Code to gain efficiencies. “I'll encourage you to have the same mindset,” he said. Ask yourself: “How do we 10X our people with AI?”
