Get Featured in Hartford Courant

Being local does not make Hartford Courant easy to get into. A community newsroom has limited reporters and limited hours, so stories about businesses, practices and organizations often wait behind news that has to run today. With a guaranteed placement, the outlet is confirmed first, you approve every word, and the article publishes on courant.com inside the window written into your scope, usually three to five days. It is a real article on the site that you can put in a proposal, a deck or a profile.

What Hartford Courant covers

Readers in Connecticut have plenty of national and international news to choose from. Hartford Courant does a different job. Local news publications concentrate on a defined area and report what is going on inside it, from civic affairs and the local economy to community events, schools, sports and the arts. The common thread is place: each story matters to someone nearby.

Local reporting treats a community as a set of people and places with names. In that setting, an opening, an expansion, an award, a new hire, a charity drive or a new service is news, provided it is told with facts. Owners, professionals, nonprofits, event organizers and creative people with a local tie are all familiar subjects of this kind of coverage.

Who reads Hartford Courant

The readership of a local news publication is concentrated where the publication is. For Hartford Courant, that is a community in Connecticut. Its readers include longtime residents, families, local employers and employees, community leaders and neighbors who follow local affairs. They read with attention because the news concerns places they know and people they may have met.

If your customers are local, local news is the most direct press there is. Being featured in Hartford Courant puts your name in front of people in your own market and gives you a news story to use in marketing, on your website and in conversations with prospects. For out-of-area companies, it signals a commitment to the community.

Reaching readers and customers in Connecticut

A business that serves Connecticut benefits from being seen where people in Connecticut already get their news. A feature in Hartford Courant places your name in front of nearby customers, suppliers and referral sources who can act on it without leaving the area. It also adds a local reference point for anyone in the state who researches you before making a call or signing an agreement.

Coverage in Connecticut is commonly sought by service businesses, restaurants, medical and legal practices, real estate professionals, contractors and nonprofits that depend on local customers. It also suits companies from other states that are opening an office, a store or a franchise location in Connecticut and want to introduce themselves to the community.

You do not need a big announcement to be local news. You need something real: an opening, a milestone, a new offering, a community effort, a personal story with roots in the area. What matters is that the details are accurate, the local link is plain, and the story tells readers something they did not know.

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

• 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.