Hometowners are news stories targeted to the reporters/editors covering hyper-local news. They are news releases about people – not the program or institution sending the release.

On your hometown news dashboard you’ll notice there are two different types of readMedia hometowners: Group and Individual Hometowners.

Group Hometowners

Group hometowners are best used to distribute many hometown news stories at once. They combine a spreadsheet loaded with student details with a customized template to create unique press releases for every record in your spreadsheet.

The Hometown Newsmaker uses the zip codes in your spreadsheet to automatically deliver these news stories to the appropriate newspapers covering your students’ hometowns. Each newspaper will receive a news release about all of the people of interest to their readers.

If the newspaper is only interested in one of the students in your spreadsheet they will receive a story about only that one person. If they’re interested in two or more people they’ll receive a press release that lists all of them in one place. This helps ensure that each publication gets all of your news in one document and ensures that no one student slips through the cracks.

Individual Hometowners

Individual hometowners are very different in that they are straight forward text documents containing news about one or two select students. They do not require spreadsheets and templates and should be used when one student accomplishes something that sets them apart from their peers.

You can target your individual hometowners to up to three zip codes and/or cities. After selecting these locations you’ll see a list of the newspapers covering them.