It’s time for some real talk. In our lifetime, journalism has never been more important than it is today. Journalism keeps people informed. As digital media has become fragmented with other voices, adding more journalism gives the audience access to more credible information. More than ever before, we need a mechanism to protect it.
Enter the Community Leaders program. It’s a cohesive integrated strategy that allows businesses to support journalism through sponsorship, enabling newsrooms to create more stories and delivering more local content that matters to its readership. In turn, businesses sponsor a topic category for one year and are tagged as a community leader for their support. 
To be completely transparent, this is nothing like sponsored content. As with all other earned media, there is no vetting of the content before it goes live. For newsrooms to deliver accurate reporting means that they need to do so with autonomy. The growth of the Community Leaders program is a testament to the unwavering belief, trust and support that the local business community has in journalism.
Here’s an example of the Community Leaders program in action.
The program sponsor, Weatherguard, chose Housing as their topic. The stories created in support of the topic are cycled through the content feed regularly, and also appear on the sponsor’s page as evergreen content.
In summary, the Community Leaders program offers an encouraging alternative to a collective challenge. If you are a business owner and are interested in participating, please contact us.