How to Get Featured in BLK News
A community title reaches people who are actively looking for someone like you. That is a narrower audience than a national outlet and often a more useful one.
Here is what BLK News is, what it is worth, and how features happen.
What BLK News is
BLK News is a digital publication covering news, business and culture with a focus on Black founders, professionals and communities. Online only, permanently live and indexed by search engines.
The remit is broad across subject matter, so a founder, a professional, a creative or a community organisation can all fit. What narrows it is the audience it is written for, and that focus is the reason it is worth anything to you.
It is not a national masthead with its own newsroom, and the two should never be described as though they were interchangeable.
It publishes quickly and the article stays up, which makes it useful as a reference point rather than as a news moment that passes within a day.
How much weight it carries
Being straight about this matters more than a flattering sentence would.
A smaller digital title is far more reachable than a national publication and carries correspondingly less authority. Anyone who checks can see the difference, and the gap between tiers is not something a confident description closes.
What it gives you is genuine. A dedicated, permanent article about your work that appears in search, that you can link from a proposal, a grant application or a speaker profile, and that puts a real story in front of readers who care about the thing you are doing. For someone whose search results are currently thin, that is a meaningful change.
Use it as a foundation to build on, not as a claim to lean on.
It is also durable. Partners, funders and organisers research people carefully before they commit, often long after an article ran, and a substantive piece keeps answering the obvious questions on your behalf.
What a feature includes
A solo, dedicated article about you and your work, with a headline and angle built around your positioning. Typically photographs and links to your site and socials.
It publishes permanently and stays indexed, so it keeps working every time somebody looks you up before a meeting, a partnership or a decision.
It is a profile rather than a news report, which means it needs a narrative rather than an announcement.
What it does not include is independent verification of your claims, which is one more reason to keep them modest and checkable.
How to get featured
- Pitch directly. Free and legitimate, subject to fit and editorial capacity.
- Contributed or sponsored placement. Smaller digital titles accept contributed articles far more readily than staff-written publications do. It is a paid route and it should be labelled as one.
- Use a professional feature service. A team writes the piece to the publication's standard and handles the placement, which is faster and more predictable.
Whichever route you take, describe it afterwards the way it actually happened.
What makes a strong piece
A person and a purpose.
What you built, who you built it for, what stood in the way, and what changed for the people around you as a result. That shape reads. A list of achievements and job titles does not, and readers stop before the third one.
Community relevance gives the piece its reason to run, so be concrete about it. The neighbourhood, the sector, the customers, the people you hire, the thing that is different because you are the one doing it. Specific detail is what separates a story from a statement of values.
Numbers help when you can evidence them and hurt when you cannot. Avoid the language of a mission statement entirely, because it reads as filler to anyone outside the organisation.
Keep the claims defensible. The article outlives the moment it was written for, and anything you would not stand behind in two years should not be in it.
One idea per piece works better than a survey of everything you do. A reader who finishes with a single clear impression of what you are building will remember it, and one who finishes with six will remember none of them.
What to expect from the process
Share the story, our team drafts the piece, you review with revisions until it is right, and nothing publishes until you approve it. Then it goes live and you get the link.
Any provider who will not show you the draft first is not one to use. If a different outlet would reach your audience better, tell us who you are trying to reach and we will say so rather than place the easy thing.
Expect to be asked for specifics you would not put on a website. The moment something almost failed, the thing you got wrong first, the person who changed your mind. Those are what make a profile readable.
Frequently asked questions
Is this the same as national press?
No. It is a smaller digital title, easier to place in and carrying less weight. Its value is as a permanent, searchable article rather than as national recognition.
Who does it suit?
Black founders, professionals, creatives and community organisations who want a substantive article that explains their work to someone encountering it for the first time.
Can I approve the article before it publishes?
Yes. You review and revise until it is right, and nothing publishes without your approval.