Get Featured in The Des Moines Register

Ask any owner who has emailed a local newsroom about a grand opening: a reply is far from certain. The Des Moines Register has a whole community to cover with a finite staff, and a pitch from a stranger is easy to set aside. A guaranteed placement removes that uncertainty: the piece is arranged with the publication in advance, you approve the draft, and it publishes on desmoinesregister.com inside a written window, usually one to two weeks. It is a real article on the site that you can put in a proposal, a deck or a profile.

What The Des Moines Register covers

Think of The Des Moines Register as a record of its community. As a local news publication in Iowa, it belongs to a category that reports on public meetings and local decisions, businesses arriving and expanding, school and sports results, cultural events, and residents doing something worth noting. Stories are chosen for their connection to the place and to the people who live there.

Local publications favor concrete detail over big claims. Where is it, when does it open, who runs it, what does it mean for the neighborhood. A story that answers those questions plainly reads like news. That applies equally to a family business, a medical or legal practice, a charity, a festival or a company arriving from elsewhere, and it is the standard a feature should meet.

Who reads The Des Moines Register

For most organizations with a local customer base, the people who matter most live within driving distance. Those are the readers a publication like The Des Moines Register serves in Iowa: residents, families, professionals, owners and community groups who follow local news to stay informed about the place they call home and the businesses and people in it.

Recognition close to home is often worth more than attention far away. A feature in a local publication gives an owner, a professional or an organizer something concrete to share with customers, donors, members and referral sources. It also gives people who look up your name a news story from your own market to find.

What local coverage in Iowa does for you

Coverage in The Des Moines Register reaches people who live and work in Iowa, which is where most local buying decisions are made. Readers tend to give more weight to a business they have seen in a publication from their own area. When a customer, landlord or potential partner in Iowa looks up your name, a local feature gives them something familiar and credible to find.

Typical clients include owners of family businesses, founders of growing local companies, authors and speakers with roots in Iowa, and leaders of community organizations. Regional chains and out-of-state firms expanding into Iowa also seek local coverage so that their arrival is explained in a publication residents already read.

Stories in a community publication work best when they sound like news about a neighbor. That means a clear subject, a location, a timeline and a human being readers can picture. Owners and professionals who can say what changed, when, and who benefits locally are already most of the way to a strong feature.

We start by choosing one of the angles below. Most businesses and practices have two or three that would work, and the best choice is usually the one with the clearest local connection and timing.

What weakens a pitch

• No local connection. If the story could run unchanged in any town, readers of a community publication have little reason to stop on it.
• Sales copy presented as news. Readers come for information about their community, so a list of offers and slogans reads as out of place.
• Vague claims. “Best in the area” and “top-rated” mean little without something a reader can verify, and everything we write must be true.
• Too many messages. One opening, one milestone or one person, told clearly, is stronger than a tour of every service you provide.