Welcome, Joe Chiodo!

Happy New Year! My year got off to a great start when longtime Sacramento Magazine Publisher Joe Chiodo joined the Sacramento News & Review team as publisher, starting Jan. 2. As publisher, he will oversee SN&R’s advertising department and our community outreach. The editorial department will continue to report to me.

For the last 30 years, Joe and I have been competitors. At the monthly Sacramento Magazine, he was the major driver of their advertising sales and its publisher for the last 14 years. For most of the last 30 years, SN&R had a much larger circulation than Sacramento Magazine, but the magazine had more advertising.

I have been a longtime fan of Joe’s, not only because of his business success but also because of his genuine commitment to our community. While our publications are different, we have always shared a belief that we can and should make a positive difference in our community. During Joe’s time at Sacramento Magazine, it was able to bring in millions of dollars for local charities with the annual Best Of extravaganza and it has donated many pages of advertising to various Sacramento nonprofits.

At SN&R, we have produced much-needed watchdog journalism while also helping to launch Second Saturday, creating the Friday Night SAMMIES in the Park Concert Series, and producing Call for Unity, an interfaith music and spoken word event that raised money for charities working in Oak Park.

And now Joe and I will be working together, at a time when there is so much happening in the media world. In 1989, when Joe and I first started competing, The Sacramento Bee was dominant in circulation, reporting and advertising. But in 2020, SN&R is now distributing more papers than the average weekday Bee. And according to the independent Media Audit survey, an annual comprehensive, syndicated audience measurement survey, SN&R has significantly more readers than the weekday Bee.

In last year’s survey, Media Audit found that we reach nearly 300,000 readers with a single issue and that more than 400,000 people read the paper once a month.

That is a lot of people who are spending billions of dollars here in Sacramento—in restaurants and stores and for housing, cars, health care and entertainment. And we have a very cost effective way to deliver those dollars to our advertisers.

Print ads work. And for many businesses, particularly brick and mortar businesses, print ads are a much more effective advertising investment than online. Business owners, if you would like new customers, give Joe and his sales team a call. A human being, not a computer program, will get back to you.

Joe recently told me: “At this point in my life, I really want to do something meaningful. I want to be here at the News & Review. Not only because I know that, with its large readership, we can get great results for our clients, but also because I believe in an independent press. An independent press that is willing to speak truth to power, that provides reliable information on controversial subjects and that is deeply involved in the community. It is a great honor to join the News & Review. And if you know me, you know you are going to get 110 percent.”

I do know Joe.

Happy New Year!.