10 Things to Know About the Support Local News Campaign

10 Things to Know About the Support Local News Campaign

On Tuesday, we announced a marketing campaign designed to educate the public on the importance of supporting local news. Over the last month, Local Media Association and Local Media Consortium worked with Google on the messaging of the campaign and the creation of a website – www.supportlocalnewsnow.com. Google also invested $15 million in a paid ad campaign with thousands of news outlets in the U.S. and Canada. 

Here are 10 things to know about this remarkable initiative:

1. First and foremost, this represents an organized effort to effectively communicate the need for the public to support local news. According to a recent Pew study, most people think that local media companies are doing fine financially. They don’t realize that without reader revenue, many newspapers and digital news sites won’t survive. This is a beautiful campaign that brings the issue to light with a call to action: Subscribe. Donate. Advertise. 

2. This is a campaign for everyone, whether you are part of the paid part of it or not. While the paid ads are not customized (impossible to do at scale), a toolkit is available for media organizations to run the ads on their own – all of the print, digital and social ads can be customized to include logos and links to subscribe, join, donate, etc. We hope that everyone will rally around the messaging and run the ads often. 

3. The paid campaign is unprecedented and will run for six weeks. It’s diverse and inclusive but simply can’t be placed in all 10,000+ local news outlets. Google’s agency worked hard on the process and in the end, placed ads with thousands of newspapers, broadcasters and digital sites. The paid campaign included many smaller publishers and those that serve communities of color. Many who did not get the paid ads did receive significant relief funds from Google in the last month (about $35 million). 

4. Much of the campaign is being placed programmatically. If your website can’t accept programmatic advertising, you likely won’t receive the digital ads. Due to the nature of programmatic advertising, you’ll want to check often to see if the ads are running on your site. 

5. The supportlocalnewsnow.com website includes a massive, searchable database of local news outlets (nearly 6,000) sorted by state. Visitors will find links to subscribe, join, donate and advertise for each media company that is listed. Check the website to ensure that your listing is correct. Report any errors or additions by hitting the contact option at the top right of the page. 

6. The first goal of the campaign is awareness, and that will take time. The second goal is to drive digital subscriptions, memberships, donations and advertising. 

7. LMA and LMC will be buying paid social media campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn to supplement the Google buy. 

8. We’ll also be collecting best practices and sharing with the industry. If a publisher is having great success using these materials to drive donations, for example, we’ll publish a case study. 

9. For those that don’t have a donation option on your website, we think now is a great time to consider it. LMA can help any publisher develop a game plan. 

10. We recorded a webinar today with representatives from Google that answers just about every imaginable question. Check it out here: https://drive.google.com/open?id=1r600xcZh8vE1SYKg7AaJe6o5QjejXUFd

Our hope is that local media companies all over North America will run these ads as much as possible. Let’s paint the internet orange with the #SupportLocalNews hashtag and the beautiful message to subscribe, donate, advertise. Let’s fill our newspapers with the message. 

LMA and LMC see many opportunities to take this campaign to the next level. We truly believe this is just the start. All ideas are welcome – bring them on! 

Melissa Perner

Multimedia Teacher and Lion Yearbook Adviser at Ozona High School

3y

Nancy we do have a webiste for The Ozona Stockman where people can donate. Where can we email you information.

Like
Reply

To view or add a comment, sign in

Insights from the community

Explore topics