NEIGHBORHOOD ALL-STARS: A fun, unique ACM-wide content program

Template for Neighborhood All-Stars content promotion

Certificate template for Neighborhood All-Star to be given by newspaper.

ACM Newsroom is pleased to announce a company-wide content program that we encourage all of our newsrooms to participate in, whether you are a daily, weekly or shopper newspaper.

"Neighborhood All-Stars" is an initiative that will spotlight men and women in our community who go "above and beyond" in their daily lives. Maybe there is a special woman who reads to children every Friday at the local library, and her efforts typically go unnoticed. Or, what about the gentleman who stops once a week to visit friends and strangers at the nursing home, doesn't he deserve a public pat on the back? Maybe a Neighborhood All-Star is just someone who is always smiling behind the counter when you shop at the local grocery store.

I was taught by one of my mentors that "everyone has a story, and that it is our job to tell them," and Neighborhood All-Stars is a unique way to tell these stories of good deeds in an alternative format that is simple and fast for the newsroom to put together, and a quick, easy read for the reader.

Included in this blog post is a link that will download everything the newsroom will need to start this program — template, artwork, fonts — as well as house ads to begin promotion and a certificate that could be given to each Neighborhood All-Star.

Link to download is: http://www.mediafire.com/?h739s75ljxb1qt0

This program has several benefits beyond getting another face in the newspaper. It has the opportunity to provide good, positive promotion for the newspaper if publicized correctly. The house ad campaign is a good start, but we encourage our newspapers to go further. Talk about the program at your local civic clubs. Make buttons that your staff wears around town that reads, "Do you know a Neighborhood All-Star?" and make sure and take submissions and suggestions when approached. Run photos of each Neighborhood All-Star receiving their certificate in a follow-up. We suggest not running the certificate photos with the initial feature.

At launch, we recommend that you find and report on the first Neighborhood All-Stars to get the ball rolling. We suggest getting four spotlights completed prior to launch, which will allow time for residents to begin submitting nominations via e-mail to the newsroom.

It is our recommendations that you make Neighborhood All-Stars a weekly feature, and make an attempt to run the future on the same page, or at least in the same section, every week.

We encourage this feature to have a life-span of at least six months, but expect that it could be a feature for more than a year or more after it gains traction with your readers.

The first newspapers that kick off the Neighborhood All-Stars campaign and publishes it will be eligible for special recognition and a small prize from ACM. Newspapers will need to submit a PDF of the page which features this promotion to Rick Rogers at rogers@amconmedia.com by July 8 to be eligible.

If you have any questions or feedback on this new ACM content program, please email Rick Rogers at rogers@amconmedia.com.