Get Featured in The Coloradoan

Ask any owner who has emailed a local newsroom about a grand opening: a reply is far from certain. The Coloradoan has a whole community to cover with a finite staff, and a pitch from a stranger is easy to set aside. A guaranteed placement works differently: it is arranged with the publication before any writing starts, you sign off on the draft, and it goes live on coloradoan.com within a window stated in writing, 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 Coloradoan covers

Think of The Coloradoan as a record of its community. As a local news publication in Colorado, 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 Coloradoan

Who reads local news in Colorado? Residents who want to keep up with their community, owners watching the local market, professionals looking for referrals and partners, and newcomers learning the area. The Coloradoan writes for that readership. Its audience is defined by location, which means a story there reaches people who can actually visit, call, book or attend.

For a local business or practice, that makes a Coloradoan feature a way to be seen by the people most likely to become customers, clients or patients. It is also a credential you can show: local news coverage tells prospects, partners, lenders and landlords that your work is known in the community you serve.

Why coverage in Colorado matters

Coverage in The Coloradoan reaches people who live and work in Colorado, 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 Colorado 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 Colorado, and leaders of community organizations. Regional chains and out-of-state firms expanding into Colorado also seek local coverage so that their arrival is explained in a publication residents already read.

The question every local reader asks is simple: what does this have to do with here? A good feature answers it in the first lines. That can be an address, a hometown, a local client base, a community project or a new service for residents. Everything else in the story builds on that connection.

The angles below are where we begin. One clear angle, backed by real details about your work in the community, makes a better local story than a list of everything you offer.

What weakens a pitch

• Nothing new. A local story needs a reason to run now, such as a date, a change, an event or a recent result.
• Missing details. Without a location, a description of what you do and a clear timeline, a feature reads as generic and local readers move on.
• Claims that cannot be supported. Local readers know the area and will notice exaggeration, and we only write what is accurate.
• A story with no people in it. Community news is about neighbors, so a feature needs an owner, a team or a client perspective.