The Times-Reporter, a GateHouse Media newspaper in Ohio, recently found a creative way to promote an upcoming major high school football rivalry.

The newspaper created two different four-page wraps of the paper on a recent Friday, playing to the long rivalry between New Philadelphia and Dover high school football teams and fans. The contest had playoff implications.

The paper called the promotion "Special Game Day Fan Edition," and 13,500 of them were printed in one of two versions on heavy, bright-white stock.

The special editions wrapped the entire paper in home-delivery and single-copy editions distributed to the two communities. The paper increased the single-copy draw 37.5 percent in anticipation of high demand. The bump in papers was a good idea.

Interim editor and publisher Tom Jekel said Friday's single-copy sales saw a nearly 900 bump from the previous Friday.

"It was the Times-Reporter's biggest single-copy sales day of the year -- by far," Jekel said. "With extra single-copy revenue and plus-business advertising revenue from the football wrap, it was a financial success on top of the feel-good publicity in our two primary communities."

One local advertiser bought the only ad spot in the wrap edition.

The back page of the wrap was a full-color graphic of how the teams matched up. The inside two pages were filled with rosters, game-by-game summaries,personal and team stats and each score from the 105 previous games dating
back to the first one in 1896.

"After all that planning, significant hard news broke Thursday afternoon — including the slaying of a 50-year-old local woman and a daylight robbery of a downtown New Philadelphia bank," Jekel said. "That doesn't happen every day here. That news dominated a regular front page with huge impact -- as it turned out, on a day that the front page of the regular edition would not be seen in news racks in our two primary communities because of the football wrap. Not to worry, we creating special rack cards on bright yellow stock telling impulse buyers: "Mineral City Woman Slain" (headline type 2 inches high), Huntington Bank Robbed" (headline type 1 inch high)."