NewsBeat

20 NewsBeat January 2018 Adam Stone, Founder and Publisher of Examiner Media, Talks About the Success of His Westchester County Community Newspaper Chain, Examiner By DANA WHITE Photo Credit — Cathy Pinsky dam Stone, one of Editor & Publisher's 25 top publishing leaders under the age of 35, is standing in the kitchen of the Mount Kisco condo he shares with his wife, Alyson, a second-grade teacher, and their four-year-old daughter, Madeleine. When asked where his office is, he holds up his BlackBerry and says, "This is my office." Then he walks into the dining room and motions to his laptop on the table. "And sometimes," the 33-year old says, "this is my office. The fact is, I'm pretty mobile. I can work from anywhere." In other words, Adam Stone, founder and publisher of one of the region's fastest-growing media companies, doesn't have a real office, unless you count the desk in his finished basement, with the home gym equipment and the big TV and Maddie's toys. There is a printer and some pencils in a Mets cup, but the desk looks neglected. Stone prefers to take meetings at Panera Bread in Bedford. His office, after all, fits in his pocket. "All I do for a living is send out and reply to emails," says the amiable Long Island native, only half joking. As proof, he sits down and scrolls through the 200 or so messages that have appeared in his BlackBerry's in-box over the past 24 hours. In an era when print and digital publishing are locked in a death- match (and few are putting their money on print to win), Stone is proving that a good, old- fashioned newspaper can still win readers, at least in Westchester, and especially if it's free. Stone may have been born and raised in Port Washington, New York, but he laid out his future in 2007 at his dining room table, where he and a staff of three completed the first Examiner community newspaper. Covering only Pleasantville and Mount Kisco, it quickly A expanded to include Chappaqua, Mount Pleasant, Briarcliff, and Armonk. In 2009, he started Examiners in Putnam County and Yorktown (the latter christened the Northern Westchester Examiner last spring), and last August, the White Plains Examiner hit the streets of the county seat. The four papers have a total circulation of 25,000 and are distributed to approximately 1,000 locations in two counties, from Cold Spring to Ossining to Hartsdale. Its advertisers are a Goldilocks spread of small, medium, and large businesses, from handyman services and funeral homes to fitness centers and corporations like Verizon, Entergy, and Sears. Since 2008, Examiner Media has seen an 84-percent increase in revenue, and Stone projects that 2011 revenues will rise another 23 percent. He's done all this without investors, office space, a newsroom, or a suit and tie. Stone and his staff of about 30 editors, reporters, and salespeople wear more hats than a Dr. Seuss character. They work out of their homes, cars, and public spaces, connected by email and cellphones and a passion for grassroots reporting. Once in a while, they meet in person. His father and older sister play pivotal roles; his father closed the Brooklyn-based family business, Banner Candy, and relocated from Long Island to Northern Westchester; now they're the CFO and associate publisher, respectively. (Stone's mother passed away when he was nine.) He rarely wavers from his uniform of a dark-blue polo shirt, jeans or cargo shorts, and laceless sneakers, except for the meeting at White Plains City Hall, where he showed Mayor Tom Roach the mock-up of the White Plains Examiner. "I wore khakis for that," he says. "And a polo with less wrinkles." A self-described "local news junkie," Stone sees his papers as a vital component of a vibrant community life. "What's happening with our school taxes, who's on the football team, who's running for town board — these issues have an immediate and direct impact on people's lives," he says. "That's what our motto, 'small news is big news,' means: the idea that people have an inherent interest in what's going on locally." A 2007 New York Times profile remarked on Stone's "Jimmy Stewart earnestness," but his laid-back, every-day- is-casual-Friday mien hides a restless entrepreneurial spirit. He operates on intuition and gut instinct "because it's the only way I know how to do it." He used to dream of Woodward and Bernstein-style journalism crusades, not starting his own business. "I got this idea and I decided to try to execute it. I never thought we'd have two newspapers, let alone four." "Adam is very ambitious and motivated," says Faith Ann Butcher, the Northern Westchester Examiner's editor in chief. A mother of four

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