Get Featured in The San Bernardino Sun

Most small newsrooms cannot answer every email, let alone report every story offered to them. A cold pitch to The San Bernardino Sun competes with everything else happening in the community that week, and many of those pitches never get a reply. 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 sbsun.com within a window stated in writing, 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 San Bernardino Sun covers

Every community has stories that never reach a national outlet: a new clinic, a restaurant changing hands, a nonprofit campaign, a planning decision, a team’s season. Local news publications exist to report them. The San Bernardino Sun is one such publication, serving readers in California, and its coverage, published at sbsun.com, is built around what is happening in its own area and who is involved.

Because the audience is nearby, usefulness counts. Coverage that tells readers something they can act on, such as a service now available, an event to attend, a cause to support or a business to try, fits local news well. So do stories of local people: owners, practitioners, organizers, authors and artists whose work has a clear tie to the community and a reason to be told now.

Who reads The San Bernardino Sun

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 San Bernardino Sun serves in California: 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.

Reaching readers and customers in California

Coverage in The San Bernardino Sun reaches people who live and work in California, 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 California 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 California, and leaders of community organizations. Regional chains and out-of-state firms expanding into California 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

• A national message with a town name added. Local readers can tell when a story was not written with their community in mind.
• Jargon. Industry terms that work in a trade magazine lose a general local audience, so plain language serves the story better.
• Overstated community ties. If the connection to the area is thin, say what is true and build the story on something else.
• Everything at once. A feature that tries to cover history, services, awards and future plans together leaves readers without a clear takeaway.