Your PR Architect

My first full-time reporting job came from a small weekly paper on Long Island. Called Suffolk Life, the paper served as the launch pad for the careers of a number of superb journalists and scholars . And me. No one becomes wealthy working at a weekly paper. Because he couldn't pay me very much, the publisher, the late great Dave Wilmott , Jr., allowed me to gas up from the same ancient Esso-esque pump that filled his delivery trucks. A few years later, as a public relations practitioner, I continued my appreciation of weeklies, especially when promoting lifestyle products and how to use them. My rationale: place a story in a daily paper, and that edition will likely be discarded when the next day's paper arrives. Place the same story in a weekly, and that paper lives in readers' homes for a full week before its replacement shows up. I get seven chances to grab your attention, not just one. Local weeklies. (c) DKassnoff, 2016. Today, Suffolk Life is out of busin...

Public relations pros once loved weekly newspapers, for several reasons: They often had more space for feature stories and were open to running accompanying photos. Eager young journalists wrote long stories about our clients. Many were delivered free or at modest cost. Unlike a daily paper, they lived in our home for a week. The daily, once read, was recycled in anticipation of the next day's edition. Most of this has changed. Weekly papers haven't fared much better than dailies as ad dollars have left the newspaper industry in favor of internet content. Dailies responded by trimming editorial staff and beefing up their online media presence. Weeklies rely more upon local advertisers and have a more modest business model, but their websites aren't a big destination for local news. By noebse via  Wikimedia Commonscontent.  We have two weeklies in our town. One has been locally written and published for years. Its design is a little dated, but I credit the own...