Thinking beyond the traditional holiday advertising section

Katelyn Mary Skaggs

Sep 1, 2026

My favorite holiday tradition at the Leader is our holiday dinner.

This is something that was well established long before I arrived at the Leader, but it has quickly become one of my favorite events. It is one of those events that reminds me why local newspapers and communities go together so well.

The idea is pretty simple, although the coordination takes work. The newspaper hosts a recipe contest where readers submit recipes for appetizers, salads, soups and desserts. For many years, we have partnered with our local community college culinary program to select the winning recipes.

After winners are selected, the paper and the college puts on a large-scale dinner where the culinary students prepare the winning recipes for everyone to enjoy. The dinner is also their final exam for the winter semester, so they are putting everything they have learned into practice while serving a room full of people from their community.

The week before the dinner, we publish a special section featuring all of the recipes and winners. We sell advertising in that section, giving us another revenue opportunity while creating content readers want to keep.

Tickets are sold to the dinner; however, the proceeds go to the college foundation to help fund scholarships.

The audience is a pretty great mix. We have parents and grandparents of the culinary students, readers who submitted recipes and people who simply love the event and have been attending for years. We also have the people whose recipes were selected and those who did not win but still want to know what recipe beat theirs.

At its core, it is 100% community driven. The recipes are created and submitted by local readers. They are selected by a local community college. They are prepared and presented by local culinary students. The people sitting around the tables are members of the same community that created the entire event.

It really does not get much more local than that.

We also create a recipe booklet that is handed out at the dinner. This year, the college is selling sponsorships in the booklet, which creates another revenue opportunity. They are also adding newspaper advertising to some sponsorship packages, meaning businesses that purchase certain sponsorships will automatically receive a newspaper ad.

That is something we probably should have started doing a long time ago, but better late than never.

This event is a great example of something that took years to build into what it is today, but it is worth it. My staff will laugh if they hear me say this again — you have to have a first year to have a second year.

A holiday dinner like ours might be too ambitious to pull together this year, especially if you are starting from scratch. It takes planning, partnerships and a lot of moving pieces. But there are plenty of other ways to create holiday events that are much easier to pull off.

Last year we started our Color with Claus event.

This is another idea I stole from the NNA Great Idea Session. We bring Santa, coloring pages and a photographer to a local business. The business pays us for the service, and we provide everything else.

I will let you in on a little secret that makes this event especially affordable for us. Santa is my publisher's husband, so Santa works for free.

Our photographer is one of our regular photographers. I print some holiday coloring sheets, throw a box of crayons in the car and we are ready to go.

It is a very low-budget event that creates great community engagement. We get to interact with readers while the business gets foot traffic.

We also host the Holiday Market, which at its core is a holiday craft fair. Local vendors rent booths, shoppers come looking for gifts and we get another opportunity to bring people together.

All these events give our newspaper a reason to be out in the community instead of simply reporting on the community.

So, as we head into another holiday season, I encourage you to think beyond the traditional holiday advertising section.

What could you create that gives your readers a reason to show up?

It does not have to be perfect in Year 1. It just has to start. Five years from now, you might have a holiday tradition your readers cannot imagine doing without.

Katelyn Mary Skaggs is the sales manager and part owner of Leader Publications, a group of four papers based in Festus, Missouri. Skaggs, a Southeast Missouri State University graduate, stated at the publishing group as an intern and then as a full-time reporter in January 2019.