Here’s my beef with the typical small business newspaper story …

I’ve been keeping my eyes and ears open for a dependable auto repair shop, and when I saw a headline about a garage that was celebrating 40 years in business, I had to read the story.

Sadly, I was already bored with the first sentence of the story: (Name redacted) has been fascinated with cars and the automotive world his entire life.

The rest of the story was just as I predicted: a laundry list that included the business owner’s life story, the years he’s been in business, the number of car repair shops he owns, all of services and repairs his shops performs, and the average years of experience his mechanics have. I’m sure this guy and his mother were pleased as punch to see every accomplishment of his career packed into 500 words for his 15 minutes of fame, but from a reader’s (OK, my) point of view, the story was a clunker.

But wait! Slam on the brakes! Here’s the real story, and it’s only one sentence buried in the middle of the story: (Business name redacted) has been recognized for more than a decade by NPR’s CarTalk for having the highest rating for trust, skill, value and prompt care.

Praise and recognition from Tom and Ray Magliozzi? Now that carries some cred for me. I could have read that story without stalling and idling between every other paragraph and mostly likely would have taken my car to this shop in the time it takes an Indy car to make a lap around a track.

Sadly, too many small business news stories are written this way, which is why we wanted to do something totally different with the stories we publish in BerkleyLive and pitch to other media outlets for the Community Marketing Program we’re launching in Berkley, Mich. We wanted to create stories that people would really find interesting and motivate them to discover the stores, restaurants and events a little more closely, if not more often. We wanted to do this by telling the stories that make these businesses truly unique that customers, reporters and editors don’t often get to hear, and in many cases, stories that even business owners don’t think of as being as important or as impressive as their curriculum vitae.

Take our story about Munro Crafts, for example. As an off-and-on crafter, I never heard of it until I came to work in Berkley, but started hearing from jewelry makers that it carries a treasure trove of supplies. I figured I better talk to the ladies at the store about doing a story on a project or class that’s popular with crafters.

Bedazzled sneakers and cell phone covers? Eh. Popular, but that’s been done for years. Beaded macramé bracelets? Hmm. That’s catching a new wave of interest these days. Basketball Wives earrings? You mean the big and bodacious crystal hoop earrings those bitchy and catty women wear on that VH1 show? The reason why there were about seven or eight women crowded around the sales counter sorting through bins of crystal and mesh beads, spikes, roundels and hoop earrings in the middle of a weekday afternoon? You bet.

Not only did this turn out to be the second most-read story on BerkleyLive, but Fox 2 Detroit picked them up for a Style File segment on its morning new show and Mi Nation, a site that aggregates stories from blogs all over Michigan, reposted the article, too. Twenty tweets on Twitter and 15 shares on Facebook isn’t bad, either.

And did you notice the story includes the fact that in two months that the Basketball Wives earring supplies accounts for half of this store’s business and that everyone got raises? Raises? Who gets raises these days? Now there’s a hold-the-presses kind of story.

But I bet you’re wondering about the most-read story on BerkleyLive. Our story about the street art mural on the back of the Armadillo Printwear building attained that achievement in two days and picked up 86 shares on Facebook, and a reprint in The Oakland Press.

Sure, I could have packed in more information about the awesome posters they create every year for the Bayview-Mackinac sailing race, but that’s another story for next summer. However, I have a sneaky suspicion that I or someone else will be in before then to write about an explosion of business that 40 cans of spray paint brought them.

Overall, how’s our approach to writing business stories going so far? In fewer than eight weeks, Community Marketing Associates and BerkleyLive have gotten 21 stories pitched to or reposted in newspapers, magazines, blogs and on TV. Another seven stories are scheduled in other media outside of BerkleyLive the next three weeks.

So, what’s your story?

Bonnie Caprara is the social media and media relations director of Community Marketing Associates and editor of BerkleyLive. She can be reached at bcaprara@commmktgassoc.com and at CommMktgAssoc on Twitter. Updates on BerkleyLive can be found on Facebook and Twitter.