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Zen and the art of writing press releases
26 Feb 2004
I have borrowed my title from the classic 'Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance' by Robert M. Pirsig but I have no illusions about matching the levels of impact and profundity achieved by Mr Pirsig.
Press releases are a necessary evil in the business of managing media strategy and coverage for a client. I say necessary evil because the writing is devoid of any creative impulse it is simply taking the facts and writing them down.
There are many who would argue that writing a release creatively and beautifully is what gets it published and my retort would be, if it ain't newsworthy it's in the trash either in the real world or online.
Many people in the media detest PR practitioners and many practitioners detest the media. Getting a deluge of press releases every day can make any editor or journo skeptical and not getting releases into the media can sap any practitioners optimism.
There are a couple of guidelines that could streamline this process. After chatting with a couple of journos and editors the short list is as follows:
After chatting with some PR practitioners the short list is as follows:
The ironical thing about these shortlists is that it all boils down to communication.
A press release is a useful tool but no matter how pretty it is and how it is formatted if the idea isn't newsworthy it's wasted time and effort.
Many publications are going to get one of their writers to build an angle and write a story so don't get caught spending hours rewriting releases and trying to incorporate all the client changes.
Clients pay to have media coverage not to crit and rewrite press releases. These thoughts of mine are generalisations from both sides of the border, but I have encountered them sufficiently often to marvel at the general lack of understanding between PR and media.
When media relationships work they work smoothly and seamlessly and when they fail they create more PR problems than existed to start with.
About Richard Clarke
Richard Clarke founded Just Ideas, an ideas factory and implementation unit. He specialises in spotting opportunities, building ideas and watching them fly. Richard is also a freelance writer.
