Get Featured in The Tennessean

Local reporters have to choose from a long list of community stories every week, and a business announcement rarely tops that list. Getting The Tennessean 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 tennessean.com inside the window written into your scope, 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 Tennessean covers

Think of The Tennessean as a record of its community. As a local news publication in Tennessee, 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 Tennessean

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 Tennessean serves in Tennessee: 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.

Why coverage in Tennessee matters

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

Stories in a community publication work best when they sound like news about a neighbor. That means a clear subject, a location, a timeline and a human being readers can picture. Owners and professionals who can say what changed, when, and who benefits locally are already most of the way to a strong feature.

We start by choosing one of the angles below. Most businesses and practices have two or three that would work, and the best choice is usually the one with the clearest local connection and timing.

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.