When Daniel Philhower and his wife first came to Taylor in 2004, they thought it was a perfect fit for them.
“We found everything we need is right here in Taylor,” said Philhower, the owner, president and CEO of Granite Media Partners, Inc., the parent company of the Taylor Press and East Wilco Insider. “We liked that it was close to (Austin), where you had all the benefits of it, but yet far enough away that it had its own culture and identity.”
Philhower, a Montana native with a background in real estate development, finance and accounting, celebrates his oneyear anniversary this month of purchasing Granite, a family of community newspapers and other publications, as well as a printing press, located in the Hill Country, Central, Southeastern Texas and near Houston.
Granite also manages, but doesn’t own, two newspapers in West Texas.
Philhower, who first came to Granite in 2016 as the chief financial officer, said he and his wife, KatiAnn, immediately saw what was special about Taylor and wanted to be a part of the community— as well as its future.
“My wife and I are very community based, very service oriented,” Philhower said. “My wife has been a teacher here for almost 20 years.”
Philhower has served as an at-large member of the Taylor Independent School District board of trustees, a deacon at First Baptist Church, which he and his family have attended since 2007, as well as a past president of the Taylor Educational Enrichment Foundation, among other roles.
Though working at a newspaper was a significant change from Philhower’s earlier career in the corporate world, it offered many benefits.
“I wanted to find a job locally to find a better worklife balance,” Philhower said. “Living in Taylor and commuting to southwest Austin wasn’t very conducive to that. It was a significant pay cut, and a lot of life changes had to happen, but I was home and that allowed me to be with my family.”
However, his previous experience paved the way for his leadership role, and eventually ownership of the chain of community newspapers, he said.
“A lot of my work relationships, I had to deal with a lot of very hard people, and that helped me,” Philhower said. “That was God setting my path in place, preparing me to be able to work with the leadership and ownership here, which then helped me prepare to take over and to move forward.”
For Philhower, his role at the helm of Granite is a natural fit for his abilities and priorities.
“To me, owning a newspaper is very community driven,” Philhower said. “It is a service that we are providing to our communities, and it helps me be a part that.”
“For me, the main things are quality journalism,” he added. “We have a First Amendment right and responsibility to provide quality news to keep our community informed.”
In addition, a newspaper provides a record of for posterity.
“We are a historical document, so we have an obligation to chronicle what happens in our communities,” he said. “Because 100 years from now, we are not going to look back on Facebook or Twitter for reliable information of what happened on this day in history. We are going to look back at what the newspaper is, and that is why it’s important for us to get as many faces and names in the paper as possible, so we can chronicle what has happened in this community.”
A final component of the community service role of a newspaper is that it provides a way for area businesses to promote their goods and services, he said.
“The third piece is we are a marketing firm, and that’s obviously where our money comes from and where my background kind of comes in—the business side of things,” Philhower said. “My objective is to be the go-to place for marketing in our communities.”
That can include print advertising, digital media, videos and even closed-circuit television, Philhower said.
“It’s not really just a newspaper,” Philhower said. “This is a brand that has a loyal audience. “
“And that’s what I am proud of,” Philhower added. “To be a part of the history of that, because that’s neat to be a part of a product that has been around since 1913, and even earlier in some of our older markets. Part of what I bought were those bound copies of the newspapers in the (newspaper library). I bought history, and I don’t take that lightly.”
