I am helping promote the “Into the West” Oscar Party in Hollywood for Lord of The Rings Fans and would like to send some Press Releases to the local papers.
Is there a format I need to follow or specific guidelines?
Thanks.
You might want to look here for some help.
I haven’t read the links, and I’ve never studied it, but I write press releases for a living, and have done for the past 10 years.
So here’s my take: writing a press release is tremendously formulaic, because of your audience, which is usually busy reporters or subeditors, who don’t want to be bothered by details or fancy stuff.
My personal rules are:
Don’t exceed five paragraphs, and use the “inverted triangle” principle to write them - i.e. most important info first; everything else comes after.
Particularly, ignore what looks like “good writing” to you. No fucker ever reads more than the first couple of paragraphs of any release anyway. Therefore the headline, first paragraph, and maybe the second, are the only things that matter.
Therefore lead with the meat: what are you actually trying to convey? Think about it long and hard - come up with a “mission statement” for the release, and whatever you and your marketing people come up with, that’s the first paragraph. It should take up 3 lines of foolscap at most.
Then do a paragraph or two of “further detail”. Also include as much third-party validation of your “mission statement” as possible - preferably quotes from people who appear not to be connected to what you’re writing about (though of course they probably are).
Finish up with a final paragraph of “any other stuff” (i.e. all the crap your managers want you to put into the release to make them look good). If it doesn’t relate to the inital statement, but you can’t delete it, then this is where to put it.
But that’s it really. And make sure it’s correctly punctuated, spelled, etc., as this makes it more likely to be printed.
I agree with everything jjim said and just want to add one more thing: Write it in 3rd person, not 1st. Having received a copious amount of press realeases in my days, I always put 1st person writing in the bottom, as it’s most likely written by an amateur and what it’s trying to tell won’t be of interest to the general public. The company/org/institution is just looking for affirmation by seeing whatever they do in print.
So write it like this:
" Cecil Adams will do a rare public reading of words ending in ‘-gry’ on Wednesday night at Wrigley Field. It’s The society for preservation of Straight Dope Hamsters which is throwing a fund raiser… blah, blittety blah."
Not:
“We thought that having a fundraiser to get better hamsters to our server, might be a good idea.”
i.e. Put the things that might interest the general public first and try to stay as impersonal as possible.
Great advice! Thank you.
jjimm’s advice is excellent. Also:
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Think in terms of what the people who will read your release (reporters) want to see. They want to see something news worthy, something that will interest their readers. So, maybe your party is the release, or maybe it’s not the party itself, but rather that Russell Crowe will be there. Think of it as if you’re selling something (you are, really). Focus the release on what makes your soiree so interesting.
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Put in lots of stuff that reporters can steal or make minor modifications to for their story. Think of it like you’re writing the article. Reporters have tight deadlines, and the more you can make it easy to write your story the better. I’ve written some releases that literally had under ten words changed and published as the articles.
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(this is VERY important) Be sure your release goes to the right person inside each news organization, and follow it up with a phone call.
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Be concious of the reporters timeframe. After he gets your release, he needs time to write a story and time to get it through the process including editing and actual publication. If you send it in the day before, it’s unlikely it’ll get coverage (unless Mr. Crowe really is there).
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For format and examples, go to a few sites that might say something similar to what you want to. People who write press releases want them to be seen, so there are tons of them on the web you can look over for ideas, format, etc.
I’ve had several releases and articles printed with no words changed whatsoever, but the reporter’s byline has been put at the top anyway. It’s very cheeky and a bit of a blow to one’s ego, but it’s also a) the highest form of flattery (assuming the publication wasn’t in a terrible rush to fill the pages), and b) exactly what you set out to achieve: i.e. your exact version of events got printed.
I forgot to say, common sense-wise, make it very easy for the publication to contact you if they’re following the story up. Also, put your company’s boilerplate paragraph after the release - usually with a heading “About XYZ company”, and under that put the heading “Press contact”, with your name, all your phone numbers and an email address. If possible, make sure the entire thing stays on one page.
Also, you should put “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” at the top. This is because of the practice whereby is possible to call a publication beforehand and negotiate to give them a release a few days in advance. Such a release should be marked “PRESS RELEASE, UNDER EMBARGO UNTIL [RELEASE DATE]”. This means they’ve agreed, under journalistic ethics, to hold the story until the date; it gives them more time to research the story. However, if you do not negotiate this first, and send an ‘under embargo’ release to them unsolicited, some publications get pissed off. Furthermore, they are at liberty to publish your story immediately and ignore your proposed release date (this happened to me a few times when I was starting out, and it was kind of embarrassing).
PRESS RELEASE - FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE [Widget company logo here]
Boise, Idaho, 1 February, 2004 - The Acme Widget Company (NYSE: AWC) announced today that its new “Mega Widget” product has been awarded the Congressional Medal of Widget Honor, confirming the company’s status as the world’s highest quality widget manufacturer.
According to a statement issued by Congress yesterday, the medal was awarded for “exceptional widgetosity in the face of extreme lumpiness”. The medal is the highest accolade attainable by a widget, adds to a growing portfolio of awards given to Acme Widget Company products.
Geoff Blablabla, Senior Widget Analyst at the Independent Widget Research Group (IWRG), said that the medal “validates the views of the IWRG that Acme Widget products are of the best possible standard, and in terms of features and high quality materials, exceed even Wodgets and Wadgets.”
In a 2001 IWRG report, the research group predicted that “Acme Widget Company widgets are primed to overtake widgets produced by XYZ Widgeteers, Inc., the current market leader.” According to Blablabla, the medal “confirms our prediction, and then some.”
“Now that the US Congress has acknowledged our position as the best widget manufacturer in the US,” said Joe Blow, CEO, Acme Widgets, speaking at the award ceremony in Washington, DC. “It has amply rewarded the hard work and dedication of our team here at Acme, who are committed to producing the best widgets money can buy, despite general lumpiness,” Blow concluded. The Mega Widget, priced at $9.99, is available at all major supermarkets.
About Acme Widget Company
Acme Widget Company has been producing high quality widgets for more than a century. Founded in 1878 by Mr John Acme, the company has grown steadily, due to its insistence on using only the highest quality materials and delivering shareholder value. The company, which has its headquarters in Boise, Idaho, empolyos more than 5,000 people at seventeen sites across the US. The company is listed on the New York Stock Exchange, and has a market capitalization of more than $165 million. http://www.acmewidgets.com.
Press contact
Ms Rachel Dingdong
Tel: 456 789 4563
Cell: 365 654 9874
Email: rdingdong@acmewidgets.com
Oh yeah, and don’t forget to get someone else to proofread it:
:rolleyes:
jjim never specifically mentioned it, but you absolutely, positively, must make sure that you include contact information on your press release. Phone, fax, email, and address.
Yes, that sounds incredibly obvious, but I usually receive one release a day that completely fails to include that oh-so-necessary information.
You mean, apart from where I said:
? 
JJimm, I’ve always wondered: Is it considered appropriate for newspapers/stations to print quotes and lift passages from a news release–without giving attribution?
Is it frequently done? Is it copyright violation?
It’s absolutely done all the time. Common sense would dictate that if I send something I want to be printed, it would be churlish of me to insist on its copyright; and indeed, any press releases I’ve ever seen only insist on the legal right to trademarks and logos - there’s no notice of copyright on the text. I guess there’s an implied permission, but you’d need a lawyer to tell you if it’s truly legal.
Sorry to bump this.
Anyways, Jjimm, I didn’t see a headline in your sample press release. By “headline,” did you mean the “subject” of the e-mail? If not, where does the headline go?
Distribution of the release, once written, is important. The New York or Los Angeles Times will run it, if at all, as a two-paragraph filler item on p. 78 of the Entertainment section on Sunday if things this week have been really dead. Of the leading local TV news media, one might use it as filler on the 11:00 segment, again if “news” is dead.
On the other hand, the local weekly shopper, looking for stories to run to justify its Second Class Mail status, will run it verbatim; the East Dakota State Society of Tolkien Buffs newsletter will jump for joy at actually having news to report, instead of some guy’s turgid analysis of McKellen’s faults as the Gandalf role in the movie; the small town daily within 30 miles of the event site will clip it but will definitely run it.
Come up with a mailing list for the press release that means the release has a good chance of being seen by the people who might be interested in attending.
Heh, well now I know why bumping old topics isn’t the best idea. Polycarp, the OP’s almost a year old; sorry for the confusion.
The item should have the following:
“For immediate release” (or the date when it’s to be made public, on the rare occasions that press are given advanced P.R. on stories to “break” on a given day)
The date of the release
Group making the release, if not on letterhead
“For further information, contact Hortense Hepplewhite, P.O. Box 17, Liverwurst, Idaho, 888-555-6789, e-mail HHepplewh@yourisp.com” (Repeat this, even if it’s in the letterhead; the rewrite people need to have quick reference to it if needed.)
Suggested headline
Text of release, in the format suggested by previous posters
Quotes are important. Put words in the mouth of the group’s leader, verifying if possible that he has no problem being attributed as saying them, because that makes the rewritten story look like somebody actually did some work to bring the story home. Endorsements from a third party, especially a celebrity (e.g., Dominic Monaghan said, “I’m making a movie in Thailand, but if I were free and in America, I wouldn’t miss this event!”) are worth their weight in gold.
As an editor at a small daily paper, I see vast quantities of press releases. The quality varies from professional to rank amateur. Just this week, we received a release that was a poor photocopy of what looked like an unfinished draft for a poster, lacking several critical pieces of information. Understandably, it went nowhere.
The advice given in this thread is pure gold; heed it.
One well-appreciated touch is a weblink to downloadable, high-resolution (200 dpi minimum) photos. We have a civic auditorium in the middle of a multiyear restoration project. Editors at small papers love photos, though some restrictions apply. A rock-solid policy forbids the publication of a check-passing photo of any kind at any time. Were we to relent on this, we would be inundated by every car dealer and furniture store who wanted to wring free publicity out of a lousy $100 donation to the school band.
True, circumstances often require us to run photos of people lined up like a basketball team in a high school yearbook. We hate that. Do something imaginative: get a ladder and shoot the group from above; get them outdoors doing something descriptive of the activity being promoted. a clever photo will be more likely to be run and run at a larger size.
Email can also be your friend. Why? Because busy reporters can cut and paste from the email in assembling the story. This is much quicker than typing from a standard paper press release. It also reduces the chance of transcription error.
Editorial views on this vary considerably. It would be worth a phone call to check policy. We are inundated by email, including ghastly spam. A clear description in the subject line is helpful.
A clever hook, unless it veers into what Travis Magee once called “a case of the cutes” is a help. Once of my best sources is a PR person for a zoo in the state’s largest city, more than 90 miles away. We rarely cover entertainment events in the city, but his stuff always merits at least a look. He always attaches a high-res photo of a zoo animal with a suggested caption pre-formatted in our style. He has a good imagination and gets a lot of stuff published, some of it four-color on the front page (though below the fold, and single column).
As always, your editor’s view may vary.
It helps to make the reporters/editors job easier.
We send press releases in paper format, but with a note at the bottom: “A downloadable text copy of this press release is available at [web url].” That saves them from having to re-type your press release, which is helpful for busy journalists.
Also, if you are sending an email press release; send it as plain text in the body of the email. Don’t make it an attachment, and especially not an attachment in some word processing program format.
Our press releases go to small-town papers and small (often volunteer-run) newsletters, but these may help at bigger publications, too.
Is the old newspaper standard of putting " - 30 - " at the end of the copy dead?