NewsBeat

December 2016 NewsBeat 15 The ability to do such extreme targeting means Community Impact's in-paper advertising is a viable competitor to Facebook. "A business owner can run, for $500, an ad in my paper and reach 80,000 households around their business," Garrett said. In his Medium post earlier this year, he wrote: "I call it a battle of the Coffee Table vs Mobile. I can't compete on the mobile platform (yet) — but I can get inside that home and with a quality and useful product that can be sitting on their coffee table. If my prospect wants to reach someone in her 30s with a good household income who lives near their store, I can compete with and beat Facebook and Google." Local advertising, he believes, is an area in which the newspaper industry has failed. "We've chased shiny objects. We've chased partnerships with folks that are really our competitors. We haven't done enough to create value for the local advertiser. "The reason why a lot of the industry is failing on the print side is, what do you expect when you cut content and cut distribution and when you raise the prices and continue to cut the core product? Do you expect advertising revenues to increase? It's laughable. But let's just go ahead and spend some more money on digital? Good luck with that. You can make money on the digital side. But it can't pay the salaries we need to do the important work we've got to do. And none of that has changed." I asked Garrett if Community Impact has considered expanding into new sources of revenue, such as events — the types of things that struggling news organizations have turned to to connect more directly with their readers. "Where do you live? Up in Boston? Every time I talk to someone who's never gotten a Community Impact newspaper, it's really hard, because you're thinking, okay, it's just a community paper," he said. He then pointed me to a recent survey in which the city of Round Rock asked its citizens how they get their news. Community Impact was far and away the leading source, beating out the Statesman. "We've built a really good brand. We haven't said, okay, let's go take advantage of that at the community level with events," Garrett said. "It's just — there's probably an opportunity to make money there. But I really want to connect with the readers in their homes. We haven't needed the events to supplement our growth. It's probably an opportunity for us — but man, I'll tell you, I've got lots of opportunities. And I'm trying to choose which opportunities I want to pursue." 32 journalists from Western New York attended a writing workshop sponsored by NYPA. Patrick Vecchio presented "Better Writing for Community Journalists" December 1st at the Roycroft PowerHouse in East Aurora. Mr. Vecchio is pictured below, addressing Kathi Luppi from the Alden Advertiser. Better Writing for Journalists Workshop

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