Get Featured in Tulsa World

Most small newsrooms cannot answer every email, let alone report every story offered to them. A cold pitch to Tulsa World competes with everything else happening in the community that week, and many of those pitches never get a reply. A guaranteed placement removes that uncertainty: the piece is arranged with the publication in advance, you approve the draft, and it publishes on tulsaworld.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 Tulsa World 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. Tulsa World is one such publication, serving readers in Oklahoma, and its coverage, published at tulsaworld.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 Tulsa World

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

What local coverage in Oklahoma does for you

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