Press release

How to use it well

• →The lead has to survive on its own - a reporter who reads only the first sentence should already have who, what, when, and why anyone outside the company should care.
• →Pick a quote that says something a press release wouldn't otherwise say. "We're thrilled" gets cut by every editor; a specific customer detail is what survives into the published piece.
• →Keep the boilerplate identical release to release. The moment it starts drifting per-announcement, it stops reading as the stable "about us" paragraph journalists expect to skim past.

Part by part

{{dateline}} — {{lead}}

The dateline then the lead, which must contain the whole story. Journalists read the first sentence and decide from it whether to continue.

{{quote_attribution}}

Attribution by name and title. An unattributed quote is unusable, and a quote from a company rather than a person reads as marketing copy.

{{boilerplate}}

The standing paragraph about the organisation, kept identical across releases so it can be lifted verbatim.

**Media contact:** {{contact}}

A named person who will answer. A press release with a generic address or no contact is one nobody can follow up on.

Common mistakes

• Burying the news in the second paragraph.

  The lead has to carry the story. Journalists work from the top down and stop early, so anything held back for effect is simply not read.

• Quotes full of superlatives.

  Thrilled to announce this revolutionary solution is unquotable, so it gets cut and the release loses its human voice. A quote saying something specific and factual survives editing.

• No named contact.

  A journalist with a question and no route to an answer writes the story without you or drops it. The contact line is the most practically important part of the document.

Questions