A Pinch of Pepper
Sunday, Oct. 4 — Good morning, it’s Keith Pepper, publisher of Rough Draft, at the controls for this week’s Sunday newsletter. In today’s issue, I have exciting updates on Rough Draft’s expansion plans, plus some “inside baseball” on the media business. But first, some real baseball and other headlines.
🌧️ Lots of rain with a high of 74° today.
LOCAL NEWS
⚾️ Playing in triple-digit temperatures that Atlanta manager Walt Weiss called “not that big of a factor,” the Braves lost 5-3 to the Dodgers in Game 1 of the NLDS yesterday. Game 2 is tonight at 8 p.m. (93.7 FM/680 AM; Fox).
🏀 In other playoff action, the Dream open their WNBA semifinal series against the Liberty today at State Farm Arena at 2 p.m. (ABC). Tickets are available.
🥬 Wholesome Wave Georgia’s annual Southern Chefs Potluck is today from 3-7 p.m. at Serenbe.
🚶 The Livable Buckhead Party on the PATH is today from 5:30 p.m.-9 p.m. at Eclipse di Luna on Miami Circle.
🏈 Here are yesterday’s local college football results:
- No. 2 Georgia 38, Vanderbilt 14
- Mercer 54, VMI 3
- Benedict 31, Clark Atlanta 3
- Georgia State 42, Old Dominion 10
- Georgia Southern 31, Coastal Carolina 24
- Morehouse 30, Tuskegee 28
🏈 The Falcons and Saints, both 1-2, meet in New Orleans tomorrow at 8:15 p.m. (ESPN; 92.9 FM).
ELSEWHERE
⚖️ Tennessee’s corrections commissioner announced his resignation, days after Christa Pike survived two doses of pentobarbital in a failed execution.
🇦🇪 The Flydubai co-pilot who attacked his captain used a crash ax and tried to seize the controls of last week’s Dubai-to-Tel Aviv flight in what Emirati prosecutors confirmed was an attempted terrorist act.
🕖 Here’s what’s in today’s newsletter:
• RD is growing
• What is Google Zero?
AND
• How you can help
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1. Rough Draft x Classic City
🚀 As reported by the AJC, Rough Draft is expanding to Athens, GA, with the introduction of a weekly newsletter and, in January, a monthly print edition. Subscribe to the newsletter here.
📍 While we have added two new cities in recent years (Tucker and Norcross), Athens is our first non-contiguous location and opens a new ad market. It also presents challenges, as we will have remote employees to manage and need to be very diligent that we are not just trying to cram Atlanta content into an Athens publication.
Rough Draft Athens will cover a blend of what I call the news people need (local government, public safety, education) and the stories they crave (food, art, real estate).
🙏🏼 This expansion is made possible by a significant grant from the Google News Initiative. We are one of 12 publishers in the country that are part of its Growth Catalyst Program.
📰 Our Athens publication is not necessarily targeted at students, but we are proud to partner with UGA’s independent student newspaper, The Red & Black. Our plan is to include R&B stories in our print issue, giving student journalists wider distribution in Athens, and we will give their sales team a page of ads to sell, delivering direct revenue to the paper.
💼 Since all of our content is free, we remain almost 100% ad-supported. I have always been obsessively focused on creating products that deliver value to our advertisers, and I’m proud of the partnerships we have built across print and digital, including this week’s first-of-its-kind email takeover from the High Museum for its centennial.
☎️ If you’re a local Athens business and want to learn about sponsorship opportunities, please get in touch.
ALSO IN ATHENS
😊 While our new publication is not officially connected to UGA, I was named the 2026-27 Cox Institute Industry Fellow at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
👍🏻 It’s a huge honor and validates the Rough Draft team’s work to find a sustainable business model for local media.
🗓️ This means I’ll be speaking at classes throughout the year, starting with Andrea Bruce’s entrepreneurial capstone class for Grady seniors this week.
🤦♂️ Fun fact: I’m a 1993 Grady grad, and I’m pretty sure we were the last class at UGA without email. It’s kinda poetic that our business continues to grow on the strength of our newsletters!
FREE family caregiving kit from AARP
SPONSORED BY AARP GEORGIA
❤️ There are more than 48 million caregivers in the nation; 2.5 million are here in Georgia. These caregivers help older parents, spouses, and loved ones live independently at home – where they want to be. They manage medications, finances, and daily needs, often without enough recognition or support.
AARP is fighting for solutions that save Georgia’s caregivers time and money, providing resources like our Family Caregiving Kit, which includes a resource guide, a free AARP jar opener, and information tailored for caregivers.
2. What’s up with ‘Google Zero?’
🤯 Publishers large and small are talking about “Google Zero.” The big ones that depend on programmatic advertising are freaking out, and for good reason.
💻 The gist is that these publishers rely on traffic from Google to drive page views, which allow them to serve ads, sometimes dozens at a time. They monetize the individual session with very little care given to an actual relationship with the reader.
📉 The collapse of traffic from search engines to news publishers is real; we have experienced it, too. Luckily, we do not monetize through programmatic ads and have focused on building an uncluttered reader experience that I think delivers more value and is brand-safe for advertisers.
Yes, that means we don’t have the scale of larger publishers, but we make up for it by knowing our audience is local and engaged.
📈 It’s also why we are so bullish on newsletters and our monthly, direct-mailed print products. People ask me about print all the time, and while our digital business has grown every year, print is still 70% of our revenue mix, and I don’t want that to change. The print revenue gives us the flexibility to experiment with digital.
👂 Print engagement is relatively AI-proof. I heard the same refrain from the CEOs of The Atlantic and The Guardian at a recent conference in New York. You can listen to those sessions on The Rebooting Show podcast feed.
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3. How you can help
👋🏼 The best way to help Rough Draft is to tell a friend about our newsletters and encourage them to subscribe. If everybody refers one person right now, we’ll double our audience!
❤️ Atlanta loves a fake fall, and this week had a few “chilly” mornings. But if you want to get ready for the real cold that may or may not ever come, you need one of our LOCAL hoodies. They are embroidered and very comfy. Become a member, and you’ll be stylish and warm in no time.
