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How did you end up in Charlotte?
Charlotte has always been on my short list for places to live and work, so when I saw a business reporting opportunity here, I had to check it out. Prior to this, I covered retail and real estate for two McClatchy-owned daily newspapers, The Island Packet and The Beaufort Gazette in Hilton Head Island, S.C.
Tell us more about your new role with CBJ.
I liked working for dailies, but I also enjoy working for a weekly. I’m very concentrated in real estate coverage at CBJ. At a small daily, you can be pulled in to cover anything and, as I learned, I am not a crime reporter. Everyone at CBJ has different reporting backgrounds and areas of concentration. I’ve enjoyed the collaborative environment. I also like working in uptown, where I can walk to a lot of interviews and meetings.
What’s your advice for public relations professionals working with you on a story?
Open communication and trust are really important in these relationships. It seems a day doesn’t go by when I’m not working with or receiving pitches from PR professionals. I appreciate when people in PR communicate clearly and transparently. Press releases can be helpful in letting us know what’s happening in Charlotte, as long as it’s newsworthy is newsworthy for our market and audience.
Has a communications professional ever pitched to you on social media?
I mainly receive pitches via email. I haven’t had a phone call pitch in a while. It doesn’t seem like too many people send pitches through Twitter, but since I receive so many email pitches, it would stand out — at least until everyone started doing that. I sometimes use social media for story ideas. I follow developers, real estate brokerage firms and a few Charlotte public relations professionals on Twitter.
Is real estate a subject that has more breaking news?
Charlotte is a very competitive and active market. We have a lot of media outlets covering real estate and development, especially now. Accuracy and breaking news are obviously very important. CBJ is a weekly print paper, but we break news daily online through our website, morning and afternoon emails, blogs, and on social media. We are technically a weekly, but it’s really only in terms of the print edition. Many people are going online to get their news. While we have a popular weekly paper, we are a daily online news outlet, and we want to be first and accurate in reporting business-related news.
What interests you about commercial and residential real estate?
I like to look at the bigger picture and think about the trends driving Charlotte development. I love to talk about office space, but residential real estate is also fascinating. I think it’s interesting how millennials and empty-nesters seem to be driving the trends in real estate right now. Millennials don’t necessarily have the funds for a down payment on a house, while empty-nesters are looking to downsize. It’s a good trend to keep an eye on, especially as millennials start aging. It will be interesting to see what happens in 5 to 10 years from now.
A huge thank you to Ashley for speaking with us! If you’d like to pitch to her, she can be reached at [email protected] and on Twitter @CBJFahey.
Blog
Q: Hi Michele! Tell us about Charlotte Parent.
A: Charlotte Parent magazine is made for parents who are local, engaged and involved. We’re a free and local publication and our monthly magazine, website, newsletters and social media networks are created to help make life easier for parents navigating life in the Queen City. We are a one-stop parenting resource, with a daily calendar of events, locally generated blogs, directories and so much more
Q: What does the staff look like?
A: We are small but mighty! We have a calendar editor, seven bloggers, an art director, digital media director, three salespeople and our publisher.
Q: How long have you been here? What did your journey look like?
A: I’ve been here for six years in January. I started when my oldest son was an infant, serendipitous that, as he’s grown, I’ve been able to share what I’ve learned as a parent along the way. I started as an associate editor, moved to web editor and am now the editor. When thinking about editorial content, I always make sure to stop and think about what I want to know as a parent.
Q: There are a lot of different types of parents and kids. How do you reach them all?
A: Our biggest demographic is toddlers to age 10. Of course we don’t exclude tweens and teens and we love babies too! We actually have special issues focused on them.
Q: What kind of information do you like to provide?
A: We have a Growing Up column, health and development content, event listings, best bets and how-to tips. We also keep in mind that many of our readers aren’t from here and they need a resource to get to know our city. We serve the greater Charlotte area, not just the city. Regardless of parenting style, we’re going to help provide as much useful information as we can.
Q: Do you get a lot of opinions/engagement from parents?
A: It really depends on the topic. It’s interesting to see what triggers a conversation, which usually happens on our social media channels. A recent example was regarding a “silent lunch,” meaning children don’t talk during lunch when music is playing. The thought behind it is, when they’re conversing they’re not eating! That received a number of comments.
Q: Tell us about your interaction with people pitching you.
A: We get product pitches all the time and, since we don’t have a new product section, I need to find a larger story within which the product may fit. We wouldn’t typically profile a business, but if you can tie your product or service to something the parenting community is going to care about — perhaps through tips or a how-to — there maybe be an opportunity there for quotes or perhaps a listing. An example of that is a recent article we did highlighting eight family-friendly restaurants in Charlotte
You can reach Michele at [email protected] and subscribe to Charlotte Parent’s free newsletter here.
Blog
Hannah Chronis, managing editor of Carolina Weekly Newspapers, was kind enough to sit down with me to discuss her South Charlotte newspapers; how she earned the top editorial spot; and her thoughts on the industry in general.
Q: Hi Hannah! Tell us a little about Carolina Weekly Newspaper.
A: Our goal is to serve our readers by providing thorough and effective coverage of hyper-local community and civic news. So at our three weekly publications — South Charlotte Weekly, Union County Weekly and Matthews-Mint Hill Weekly — and our monthly publication Pineville Pilot, we’re getting back to the basics.
Q: How did you get the gig?
A: I actually started as the sports reporter here. Mind you, I didn’t have a ton of experience in sports, but if you’re passionate about newspapers, community journalism and you’re a good writer you can figure it out. I might have had some help from my husband to make sure my sports lingo and analogies were on par. I did that for 1.5 years and then we had a change in management, which led to a change in our organizational structure. They chose me for the managing editor position.
Q: That is awesome! And you’re managing ALL four publications? That seems like a lot.
A: Yes; it’s a lot of work but it’s necessary. Given the nature of the business, and with our audience in mind, we have to be hyper-local to make sure that the news is as relevant as possible. It wouldn’t work doing just one South Charlotte paper. We have been talking about possibly tweaking our territories a bit though.
Q: Tell us about your digital strategy.
A: Daily newspapers are struggling, but weekly community publications are still going strong. People still like to pick it up and cut out pictures of their kids and post them to the refrigerator. We understand we need to expand our digital presence because everyone consumes their news differently. It’s a challenge for a small staff like ours, but we’re heading in the right direction. We just unveiled a new website this month that we think will help tremendously. You’ll find things there that you won’t in print. We’d love to hire a full-time person to focus on all things digital and do more with our social channels and potentially start an email newsletter.
Q: Do you work with quite a few PR folks?
A: You’d be shocked how often I get pitched news that isn’t relevant to our readers. There are a handful of folks that cold call and follow up a bit too aggressively as well. I get 30-40 emails a day that aren’t relevant.
With that being said, I really value the way you and I have been able to work together. The great thing about the way you run your business is, if I reach out to you you’ll be sure to get back to me quickly with what I need, and you have a good feel for what we’re looking for. What you do is so important to us. We wouldn’t be able to put out a quality paper if it wasn’t for PR agencies. I love getting press releases with all the information needed to write a quality business brief with a photo. That makes my job easier.
A huge thank you to Hannah for speaking with me! If you’d like to contact her she can be reached at [email protected], and be sure to mention her Pivot PR Q&A.
Blog
For those of you who subscribe to Charlotte Agenda, you know the staff does a series called “Cribs” where they go to local businesses and explore their work space. In addition to some good information about the companies they also include interesting photos that showcase what’s in the refrigerator and any unusual people or things in the office. We liked the idea so much that we decided to check out Charlotte Agenda “Cribs” style. Take that, Ted!
About Charlotte Agenda:
- Why they exist:
Charlotte Agenda exists to make Charlotte the smartest, most human city in the world.
- What they are:
User’s guide to Charlotte.
- What they do:
They publish 5-10 stories a day on a website and send a handcrafted newsletter early each morning around 7 a.m. (sign up). They also do original reporting straight to Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and Snapchat. How large are we as of 4/6/2016?
- Monthly Unique Visitors: 250,000+
- Monthly Pageviews: 1,000,000+
- Daily Newsletter Subscribers: 13,500+ (55%+ open rate)
- Instagram Following: 40,000+
- Organic Facebook Reach: 600,000+
Pivot PR Observations:
They are located off of Cedar Street just behind Panthers Stadium. –discrete except for their portable drinking hole outside the front door.
The first thing you see when you walk into the office is a nice lounge area where team meetings, chats with guests and in-house events are held.
The plan is to display this sign proudly on the wall, but right now it makes for a heck of a coaster.
Apparently they had a polaroid camera in the office and visitors got their picture taken. We at Pivot PR were not as fortunate as these folks. Our recommendation is to bring it back!
Pivot PR VP Trish McGuire grilling Editor-in-Chief Andrew Dunn. You see, PR and media folks can get along.
We visited late afternoon. Must be nice to work at Charlotte Agenda because 3 out of 5 were out (maybe they knew we were coming.)
Apparently they recently had a party which depleted their stock in beer. Not too bad if you ask me!
Blog
I recently sat down with editor-in-chief Scott Jensen to learn more about his media company, Charlotte Stories.
Q: Hi Scott! Tell us a little about Charlotte Stories. 
A: We’re a daily newsletter that focuses on local news. We’ve got 13,000 email subscribers, several social media outlets specific to Charlotte areas (Charlotte, Lake
Norman, Concord, Rock Hill, Huntersville and Gastonia) and we average nearly 25,000 views on our website a day. Our audience is comprised primarily of late 20s and 30s business professionals in Charlotte, but we’re expanding that. We want to be more diverse and reach other groups such as the refugee, music and African-American communities.
Q: Interesting. How did you get into the business?
A: It all started years ago when I was building Facebook pages that were branded for different cities. I had 60+ at one point, then I started Global Flare, similar to BuzzFeed but for local news. It was a lot to juggle and realized I really should start focusing on Charlotte. I started looking at domain names and found Charlotte Stories and I knew that was the perfect name.
Q: What makes Charlotte Stories different from its competitors?
A: There is a lot, but generally speaking some of the others do more features and we cover more hard news. We’re also more inclusive to several types of news, and surrounding areas, where competitors feel more narrower and blog-ish. We also put more of an emphasis on video, and I’d like to do more events.
We really take into account what people want and what is trending. We make a conscious effort to understand our audience and bring them interesting and different news they wouldn’t find elsewhere.
Q: What was the biggest story you broke?
A: Do you remember the post Super Bowl interview with Cam Newton and how a Bronco player was whispering in his ear behind the curtain? That was us — 3.3 million views in under two days! I knew there was a story behind that story and that Charlotte needed to hear it, so I started doing some research online and found a video of what another Panthers player had posted via Twitter.
Q: Do you work with many PR folks on the “earned” side? What about advertising?
A: We love to work with PR folks and encourage them to pitch us fun and different types of stories. We’ve got a handful of advertisers now but we’re looking to add the right partners. Everyone has their own unique needs and, if interested, I’d encourage them to reach out to me directly.
Q: Tell our readers something interesting about yourself.
A: I’m a licensed real estate agent and I earned my undergraduate degree in pastoral ministries.
Q: Where do you see Charlotte Stories in three years?
A: I’d like to take over news in Charlotte! I want to rebrand our city and help it find its identity.
You can contact Scott at [email protected]. Introduce yourself and tell him Drew at Pivot PR sent you!
