Get Featured in Omaha World-Herald

Local reporters have to choose from a long list of community stories every week, and a business announcement rarely tops that list. Getting Omaha World-Herald to cover your opening, milestone or project on your own usually means repeated pitching and a lot of waiting. With a guaranteed placement, the outlet is confirmed first, you approve every word, and the article publishes on omaha.com inside the window written into your scope, usually one week. It is a real article on the site that you can put in a proposal, a deck or a profile.

What Omaha World-Herald covers

Local news is the layer of journalism closest to where people live, and Omaha World-Herald works at that level for readers in Nebraska. 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 Omaha World-Herald

People read a local publication because it is about their own streets, schools and businesses. The audience for Omaha World-Herald is that kind of reader in Nebraska: 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.

Why coverage in Nebraska matters

Coverage in Omaha World-Herald reaches people who live and work in Nebraska, 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 Nebraska 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 Nebraska, and leaders of community organizations. Regional chains and out-of-state firms expanding into Nebraska 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

• 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.