Get Featured in The Roanoke Times

Ask any owner who has emailed a local newsroom about a grand opening: a reply is far from certain. The Roanoke Times 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 roanoke.com inside a written window, usually one week. It is a real article on the site that you can put in a proposal, a deck or a profile.

What The Roanoke Times covers

Local news is the layer of journalism closest to where people live, and The Roanoke Times works at that level for readers in Virginia. A publication of this kind typically follows town or city decisions, neighborhood changes, new businesses, schools, local sports, community events and the people behind them. National outlets rarely get to these stories, which is exactly why local publications exist.

The tone of local news is direct and practical. Readers want to know what is opening, what is changing, who is behind it and how it affects them. That makes room for stories about a business reaching a milestone, a professional bringing a new service to the area, a nonprofit meeting a need, an event worth attending, or a resident with an achievement the community would want to hear about.

Who reads The Roanoke Times

People read a local publication because it is about their own streets, schools and businesses. The audience for The Roanoke Times is that kind of reader in Virginia: homeowners and renters, parents, shop and restaurant owners, professionals, civic and nonprofit leaders. These are the same people who choose a local doctor, lawyer, agent, contractor or place to eat.

A story in a community publication does two jobs. It introduces you to readers who live in your service area, and it becomes a piece of proof you can point to afterward. Nonprofits use local coverage with donors and volunteers, founders with investors and new hires, and authors and artists with venues, bookstores and galleries.

What local coverage in Virginia does for you

Coverage in The Roanoke Times reaches people who live and work in Virginia, 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 Virginia 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 Virginia, and leaders of community organizations. Regional chains and out-of-state firms expanding into Virginia 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.