How To Get The Local Newspaper To Write Your Story

Sometimes I just don't get the people working at the local newspapers. After a great event, I seem to always end up with questions like; why do the newspapers exist and what are their missions? Because I would think that they must have a goal, some sort of plan for what they are doing. Or maybe not?

I am trying to figure it out, but I just don't get it.

Remember the grand opening I talked about yesterday? It was probably the biggest story in our county this particular day. I am not saying that it's a really big story, but there are usually nothing exciting happening anyway... that's why.

But guess what? The largest of the local newspapers in our county, they didn't publish a single word about the event.

From the image above (yes, it's written in Norwegian), you can see that all this newspaper seems to care about is local sports (aka football/soccer). They also had a few stories of some interest for people living in this particular town, but I can't remember the topics (I guess they didn't really catch my attention).

So what am I really trying to say?

At the moment, I have not a single clue regarding how to get the local newspaper to write our story. Well, I have one suggestion... and that's our press releases. They have to be very detailed and specific about this particular town. In the press release, why should focus on questions like why should the press come to our event, and why is it a very interesting event for people living in this specific town?

The problem so far, is that we have written a general press release, and sent this one standard press release to all the newspapers in the county. Next time, I think we'll need to write one press release to each newspaper. That might be a lot more helpful, and it actually might get the local newspaper to write our story.