With Lent coming up, you'll find a Lenten reader callout ad on GateHouse News Service that asks for your readers Lenten thoughts. In the 40 days leading up to Easter, some people give up something, and some people spend time exploring their faith in a deeper way.

The Lenten reader callout is available in three sizes: a 5x2 for the bottom of your front page, a 1x2 to run in your front-page rail, or a 4x3 which fits into some of GateHouse's redesigns for page 2. You can run this ad every day for one week, and if you want to give readers more time, you can extend it to two weeks.

This is also an excellent opportunity to reach out to churches in your area to ask them to help in getting readers to respond. You might suggest that readers pose the question in adult prayer groups or in children's religious education classes. Be sure to let them know your deadline.

GateHouse News Service will provide 48 readers callouts this year. A schedule of the ads is available in the Newsroom Handbook. As you get submissions from readers, you can run the responses online and in print. We think it's key to run the ads consistently in a prominent place to get the most out of them. And it's equally important to run the best of the submissions you get in print and and even more online.

On the news service, we are providing a package of links to each of the callouts as we produce them. That way, you can find them easily. The callout links package so far includes the Boy Scouts callout, Valentine's Day callout, the Presidents Day callout and the Lenten callout.

We hope you find reader callouts a great way to interact with your readers and get them involved in your newspaper and Web site.

Jean Hodges is national editor for GateHouse News Service. You can reach her at jhodges@gatehousemedia.com