An experiment with Mars Petcare: if local editors can't prove the national brands belong back in local newspapers, something's really wrong. Mars has taken a full page, once a month, for a year — rescue stories from the Middleburg Humane Foundation on one side, how Mars makes a better world for pets on the other.
Every community in America has three things: a local newspaper, a local animal shelter, and people who are irrationally devoted to their pets. Almost nowhere are those three connected to each other in a way that produces money.
Once a month, a full page appears in the Fauquier Times and The Georgetowner. One half is a reported rescue story from the Middleburg Humane Foundation. The other half explains how Mars makes its pet food and the science behind it. Along the bottom runs a row of eight reader-submitted pet photographs, and each one is paid for by the family whose pet appears.
That last part is the part that matters. The page does not depend on a national advertiser renewing. It is funded by its own readers — which is exactly what makes it something any community newspaper can copy.
Tanner spent eleven weeks at the Middleburg Humane Foundation. Reported by Dana Priest. Read it as the printed page, on your phone, or as the postcard.
Read the issue → ArchiveThe full run of the series, each one available as the newspaper page, the phone read, the web story, the postcard and the Reel.
Browse the archive →This works in any market with a community newspaper, a local animal shelter and at least one independent pet food store. The national content is supplied free; you supply the part only you have. There is no syndication fee in the first year.
What you receive at no charge, what you keep, and the fixed rates. Everything an editor needs to decide in one sitting.
See the terms → The layoutYour rescue story on the left, the photograph in the center, the story we send on the right, the Mars strip across the bottom. One example, fully annotated.
See the template → SocialHow a rescue story becomes a Reel. The format, the tool stack, what it costs, and the numbers that decide a renewal.
Read the playbook → BackgroundThe four partners, the Mars pet care science behind the series, the twelve-month editorial calendar, and the editorial standards.
Read the prospectus →A community newspaper, a local animal shelter, and an independent pet food or pet supply store. If your town has all three, this works. If it is missing one, it probably does not.
Mars Petcare funds this page. Mars approves its own company content — the science, the profile, the strip advertisement — and sees the rescue reporting when readers do. It has no review, no approval and no notes on that half of the page. The disclosure is printed on the page itself, in the same size type as everything else.
This is not a courtesy to the sponsor. It is what lets the page exist at all, and it is the reason a partner newspaper can defend the model to its own board.