Keith Pepper named 2026-27 Cox Institute Industry Fellow

Keith Pepper, owner and publisher of Rough Draft, a leading local media organization in metro Atlanta, has been named the Cox Institute’s Industry Fellow for 2026-27.

“The Cox Institute is thrilled to have Keith Pepper as our Industry Fellow this year,” said Dr. Amanda Bright, executive director of the Cox Institute. “He brings a wealth of knowledge and understanding about how to build news organizations and engage communities in today’s media environment. His ability to share his experiences and ultimately inspire our Grady College journalism majors about what’s now and what’s next in newsrooms is invaluable.”

Pepper, who graduated from the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication in 1993, has already spent time in Athens working with the next generation of Grady graduates through his role on the college’s alumni advisory board.

His role as Industry Fellow will allow him to meet with 24 students across the leadership, writing, and innovation labs in the Cox Institute throughout the year and to serve as the keynote speaker at the Cox Institute spring recognition dinner in April. Pepper will be the Cox Institute’s ninth Industry Fellow.

The Cox Institute’s core value is to prepare students for roles in leadership, writing and innovation in the news media through experiential learning opportunities. One of Pepper’s hopes as Industry Fellow is to expose the students in the three Cox Institute labs to the business side of journalism, as it continues to change regularly, he said.

“The ability to just be around the brains that are at the Institute and have a chance to really focus and help students understand the business of media, I think, is critical,” Pepper said.

Pepper acquired Springs Publishing, a community newspaper publisher, in December 2020 and has transformed it into a digital-first media company that reaches almost 1 million readers a month across print, web, email and social media. 

“We needed to come up with a way to market the company to younger people,” Pepper said. “To make it more attractive to a wider geographic region. Really, what I call to make it geographically agnostic.”

Bringing real-world experience into these students’ academic settings through their work at the Cox Institute is something Pepper said is an invaluable way to learn, just as he did in college through his internship at Cox Radio in 1988, where he later worked part-time after graduating from UGA until 1996.

“I think we need to really be able to show success stories and that there are ways that you can make this into a career,” Pepper said. “It’s critical to democracy. It’s critical to a functioning society that we all want to live in that we have sustainable, thriving, but at the very least sustainable media companies to continue to do what we’ve done for 250 years.”

Author: McKenna Edwards