Companywide effort salutes community nurses

For the second year in a row, GateHouse News Service created a companywide effort to honor our communities' nurses for National Nurses Week.

This year, however, Salute to Nurses expanded from a print-only into a print and online effort in many of our more than 350 newspaper communities, using SecondStreet Media's Upickem platform to encourage readers' nominations for special nurses in their lives.

Many of the nominated appear in print sections during National Nurses Week, May 6-12. See an example of a section here. Nurses will also be given commemorative certificates of appreciation in many markets.

The section includes articles on the future of nursing, how to become a nurse, and other information for prospective health-care industry employees.

"This section was a great opportunity to not only prominently feature our communities' top nurses, but to give prospective nurses information on the industry," said Lisa Glowinski, director of GateHouse News Service, which created a base section for newspapers to add their own ads and copy to.

The initiative has been one of GateHouse's more successful projects so far this year, generating more than 628,500 pageviews as of May 8 and featuring hundreds of local nurses across the country.

If you have any questions about GateHouse Media's Salute to Nurses initiative or what GateHouse News Service can do for you, contact Glowinski at lglowinski@corp.gatehousemedia.com. To get ideas for a similar initiative in your market, contact Rebecca Capparelli, GateHouse Media Sales & Marketing Division, at rcapparelli@gatehousemedia.com.