When conducting media outreach in smaller communities, don’t skip over community newspapers. Holly Michael, communications manager for Good Samaritan Hospital in Dayton, Ohio, regularly leverages community papers when promoting hospital programs. Here’s her tips for effective community newspaper outreach:
1. Be truly local. Community newspapers only care about your event or announcement if you can give them the names of people from their community who are involved.
2. Help them. Remember that community papers have limited staff to attend events. Offer press releases and photos afterward so they can supplement their reporting—they may be interested even if they couldn’t make it.
3. Watch deadlines. Some weekly newspapers share a printer with many sibling papers from other communities, and in order to get in the queue, they close their editorial pages up to six days ahead of their publication date.
4. Subscribe. If you want to track the results of your media outreach, you may need to subscribe directly to the papers. Most do not have a free online version and many are not on the radar of major clipping services.
5. Don’t overlook them. Small papers have limited circulations but are read cover to cover by people in the community.