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Celebrating the anniversary of the press release

29 Oct 2007

At the end of October 2007, the world marks a little-known anniversary - the invention of the press release. There may be other office inventions - the fax machine, the photocopier, the Internet - that have had a far greater impact on both modern society in general and the communications industry in particular, but few have gone the distance. How many inventions from 1906 are still in operation today? Will we still be using the fax machine, for instance, 100 years from now?

The press release was birthed on 28 October 1906 by Mr Ivy Lee following a major rail accident. Lee, considered by many to be the father of modern PR, convinced his client Pennsylvania Railroad to distribute the first press release, and to invite the gentlemen of the press to the crash site. He even laid on a special train to transport them.

The New York Times printed that release - verbatim - on 30 October 1906.

In the century since then, the press release has become part of the public relations landscape and has weathered many changes in technology that have altered the channels of dissemination but not the concept of the release itself.

And yet, for all its longevity, the press release is one of the most maligned items in the public relations arsenal attracting major criticism from those on the receiving end of it - the media.

Ask any journalist what he disparages most about the PR profession and he is likely to comment on the press release. It's badly written, it's poorly targeted (in the sense that it refers to a beat which he does not cover) and it's mass mailed. In that light, the press release has come to represent the lack of training and professionalism in a rapidly growing industry. So it's not the release which is so much at fault as the PR practitioner who issues it.

It's possible to have a well-written release but it will still draw fire if the distribution list is un-researched or too large.

In that sense, the modern day press release is analogous to an AK47 in the hands of a child soldier - it's too powerful a weapon to be left in the hands of juniors who don't have the experience or skill set to know how to handle it judiciously.

Of course, like any FMCG product vying for attention, the press release has enjoyed a change of packaging in the last decade. Now referred to as a media release, it has been rebranded to indicate that the locus of reach embraces radio and television newsrooms (broadcast media) as well as Internet news portals (cyber media) and not just newspapers or magazines (print media).

The game has changed. The field has gotten wider. But we still play with the same ball.