Founder & CEO @impactnews. Connecting people to their community all over Texas. Saved by Grace.
Austin
Joined September 2021
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Pinned Tweet
This video was produced in September to celebrate the 20th Anniversary of @impactnews. I just realized I didn’t post it here and I definitely wanted to pin this bad boy. #grateful
I have gotten zero calls from friends asking me to run for the open Senate seat in Texas. I am so glad I have such good friends.
Why does a 3 foot putt stress me out so much?
Budget cuts for every state are coming, local news peeps. Don’t count on government 💰 to get the work done.
For the FY2027 budget, @GovSherrillNJ eliminated funding for local news, even though the NJ Civic Info Consortium was created by the NJ Legislature. The consortium clawed back just $1 million, which means reducing the no. of grants and amounts. Grantees in the Dec. cycle like @jerseyvindy received a grim letter yesterday. Basically, fewer news orgs. will receive grants, and the grants will be much smaller. "We recognize what these reductions can mean for you: difficult decisions about retaining staff, maintaining coverage, continuing programs, and honoring commitments to your communities. For some organizations, reduced support may threaten your ability to continue operating."
Congratulations from all of us at @impactnews! 🍻 🐌
After an emotional win over the Swamp Donkeys, Historic McKinney Snails won the Supporters Shield for the inaugural Chupacabras Pitch Casual League. Preview of tomorrow’s Community Impact Paper. 🐌🤝🏆
Playoffs are next week then we’ll kickoff Season Dos at TUPPS Brewery. Learn more and how you can register for Chupacabras Pitch at Tupps (as a player or team) at McKinneyChupacabras.com
Here’s preview of tomorrow’s Community Impact Newspaper!
Taylor Daily Press shutdown all their own printing operations with equipment shipped to Asia.
We may have the last newspaper printing plant in the entire Central Texas area.
And we’re having our best year ever.
You know what a disaster is? Letting a poor leader with a loser mentality stay in the building.
A players want to be with A players. We will find an A player and rebuild.
Had a feeling this was on the horizon after some things I heard about the athletic department a few weeks back. However this is a disaster class IMO.
You have an AD on his was out who will now have to make an extremely important hire less than two years after he made the last football hire. Now Sam Houston will be searching for a new football coach AND a new AD. My questions are this:
1. What legitimate HC candidate will want to come to coach at a school where the AD who hired him is retiring in less than a year.
2. What legitimate AD candidate will want to come to run an athletic department at a school where he doesn’t get to make the most important hire you can as an AD & be handed this mess where you have a first year coach you didn’t pick?
😂 Dedication to program? That’s a slap in the face to the fanbase and administration. My man you went to work for NDSU and then SFA. Dedication? Which program? Absolutely awful hire and the first mid season fire from Bobby. Says a lot about the type of leader he was. The Item article spells it all out. Is it inaccurate?
Thank you, @CoachPhilLongo, for your friendship and dedication to this community and program. Was looking forward to doing more together! God has a plan, my friend.
Correct call.
I love this @russellybarra. I will never forget when I started CI - going to the PO Box every day - the customers who paid me quickly helped me survive. I tell my accounting team this story and challenge them to pay our vendors quickly because they may be just like Jennifer and me when we first started.
🎯
I pay every invoice the day it comes in—not net 30, not on Friday, but that day. And anybody who tells me that’s bad cash management has never had the best guy in town pick up on the first ring.
Here’s what nobody tells you about paying slowly: You think you’re being smart by floating your money, but what you’re actually doing is training the best people in your life to answer somebody else’s call.
Every plumber, every lawyer, and every good contractor has a short list of clients they’ll drop everything for. The people on that list are the ones who never made them chase a check.
So when it’s Sunday, something happens to your pipes, and you need the one guy who’s actually good, you’re either on that list or you’re leaving a voicemail.
I’d rather lose 30 days of float than lose that phone call. Pay fast, man. It’s the cheapest loyalty you’ll ever buy.
— Nick Ayala
💯 and if you think @CodyC64 is asking too much - wait until PE guys get involved
Cody Campbell, Texas Tech’s billionaire booster, doubles down on saying the quiet part out loud.
And he’s not wrong.
usatoday.com/story/sports/nc…
John Garrett 📰 retweeted
Cody Campbell, Texas Tech’s billionaire booster, doubles down on saying the quiet part out loud.
And he’s not wrong.
usatoday.com/story/sports/nc…
Scaling local news isn’t the hard part. Monetizing is the hard part.
OpenAI will stop funding this initiative at some point.
What’s the competitive advantage to maintain this scale profitably?
Not platform: Pretty dang good local newsletters are popping up everywhere.
Not technology: Everyone can vibe code some cool stuff.
My local news scaling success and failures say this is the biggest obstacle to this vision:
Building incredible local Sales Ops is 10x HARDER than scaling news or tech ops.
Best of luck!
Media is changing at AI speed: the open web deteriorating, search shriveling, LLMs rising, hyper-personalization surging, old revenue models breaking.
•AI threatens to finish what the algorithms started: wholly upending journalism as we know it
axios.com/2026/10/24/axios-a…
John Garrett 📰 retweeted
Early voting began today in Texas! If you live in one of 70+ communities covered by Community Impact, enter your address at communityimpact.com/voter-gu… to see everything on your ballot, from the US Senate race to local propositions.
More via @impactnews: communityimpact.com/central-…
For local voting information, this is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen.
(Wait till you see what we do next election!)
communityimpact.com/voter-gu…
We live in the Information Age but no one knows what’s happening in their own backyard. Boring is beautiful!
“I was asked the other day if local journalism was boring, and I was like, ‘It may be boring, but it’s necessary.’”
cjr.org/business_of_news/im-…
Incredible scoop on halftime speech by @RapSheet
#Cowboys coach Brian Schottenheimer walked to the front of the room in a team meeting and delivered a strong message to his team: I messed up.
My story on Schottenheimer taking accountability for last week's miscues: espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/5009…
espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/5009…
