Print Is Profitable for Community Impact

John Garrett had expected good revenue growth for 2025. Given the ongoing geopolitical pandemonium, however, he’s now anticipating a flat year, which really isn’t so bad considering 90% of his sales comes from print news.

Community Impact is a collection of about 40 free community newspapers distributed by U.S. mail once a month in the state of Texas. There are also daily digital newsletters, bringing in the remaining 10% of revenue for the company, which should total $33 million in 2025 with a profit margin under 10%. Last year, revenue grew about 8%.

The company’s achievements are impressive considering that more than 3,200 print newspapers have disappeared since 2005, according to Local News Initiative. Between 2002 and 2020, estimated newspaper publisher revenue dropped by 52% as print circulation and advertising revenue dropped, according to the U.S. Census.

So how has Community Impact kept growing since its founding 20 years ago?

High-quality, locally-focused content that people actually want to read, a unique distribution model of free, mailed newspapers to entire communities, strong local advertising support from businesses and a reader completion rate of about 70%, Garrett told AMO.

“People want to feel good about where they live and work. They want to be connected to their communities. And so when bad things happen—and they do—we cover them, but we do it through this filter of: Are you trying to scare people? Or are you trying to help them understand what’s going on around them so that they can feel good about where they live?” Garrett said.

That nuanced approach to reporting, balancing honest coverage with a constructive, community-oriented perspective, is key for their continued success, he said.

Garrett also runs a printing press, one of the few left in the region, and takes in business from outside of Community Impact. That business does about $7.5 million in annual revenue with 5% to 10% profitability.

Continual Growth

Community Impact covers about 40 Texan communities and adds two to four new neighborhoods a year. They focus on areas with robust local business ecosystems to support the ad-end of the business. John had previously worked on the business sides of the Houston Chronicle and the Austin Business Journal, and with his wife Jennifer founded Community Impact 20 years ago in Austin. He borrowed $39,000 from his Southwest credit card and started the company in his game room.

“The model was, could we get enough local advertisers to support the costs of the mail, postage and staff?” Garrett said. “Could you figure out a way that you could build a high quality product and send it in the mail, like a shared mail product for free and make money?”

The first edition cost $30,000 to create and sold $16,000 of ad revenue. Garrett, however, got customers to prepay for ads and said that if they bought for the 12 editions off the bat, they’d get the first one half off. By the second edition, Community Impact was already breaking even. Within five months, they were expanding into a second area, and then kept growing into Housing and Dallas.

Then they got a little overly ambitious, and went into Phoenix, Nashville and Atlanta, only to leave those markets after a while and double down on Texas. Community Impact has a circulation of 2.5 million today, which Garrett believes could double or triple at some point.

It wasn’t until the pandemic that the company decided to focus on digital. The daily email newsletter now has about 150,000 unique subscribers around the state.

Not that all of Garrett’s eggs are just in the print basket.

We’re innovating a lot on our digital products… But we have to keep the quality of product high. So how do you do that? You do that with passionate people that care about product, and you have got to have distribution. We don’t sell digital services like everybody else in our industry is selling… I want my newspaper to be the best newspaper in the world because I own and I operate this, and I want my email newsletter to be the best in the world because I own and operate it. I don’t want to sell Meta ads, like a lot of our peers are doing, so I’m probably leaving a lot of money on the table by doing that, but that’s just been my philosophy. It’s a focus thing, you know?

Garrett said he’s also not afraid to pivot and experiment, test assumptions and be wrong. He is currently focused on the tech stack and digital systems to ensure the long-term sustainability of the company.

“Most newspaper organizations are thinking about cutting costs on print production, cutting costs on the overall design of the print product. And I think what we’re trying to do is, we really want our papers to come in the mail for our readers to feel delighted. That’s what I would encourage those daily news organizations to do.”

Today, Community Impact employs about 80 people in editorial, 80 in sales and 30 in design.

Garrett said:

Some of the magic is also staff, the passion that our staff has—we show up to city council meetings, we show up to chamber of commerce meetings. We’re in the community. We have teams that are in each of these markets that love their community, care about their community, kind of the old community newspaper model, and we’re really good at sales.