Get Featured in The Virginian-Pilot

Local reporters have to choose from a long list of community stories every week, and a business announcement rarely tops that list. Getting The Virginian-Pilot to cover your opening, milestone or project on your own usually means repeated pitching and a lot of waiting. A guaranteed placement removes that uncertainty: the piece is arranged with the publication in advance, you approve the draft, and it publishes on pilotonline.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 Virginian-Pilot covers

Think of The Virginian-Pilot as a record of its community. As a local news publication in Virginia, 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.

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 Virginian-Pilot

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 Virginian-Pilot serves in Virginia: 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.

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

Local trust is built close to home. When The Virginian-Pilot covers a company, readers in Virginia see it in a setting they know, alongside news about their own communities. That context helps with customers who prefer to buy nearby, with partners who want to work with established local names, and with anyone in Virginia who checks your background before reaching out.

Demand comes mostly from businesses with a physical presence in Virginia: shops, clinics, firms, studios and venues that want more people nearby to know them. It also comes from entrepreneurs raising their profile ahead of a local launch, and from companies headquartered elsewhere that are hiring or opening in Virginia.

A local publication writes for neighbors, so a feature earns attention when it answers a neighbor’s questions: who you are, where you are, what is new and why it matters to the area. The strongest stories name the town or neighborhood, give dates and details, and show a connection to the community beyond the sale.

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

• 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.