It's Not a News Release if There's No News in It

There's no question that the news/press release is evolving as a media relations tool. But there's also no question that no matter what you call it, or how you present or distribute it, it must:

• 1. Contain news or useful information
• 2. Be distributed in a format that makes the content easy to use

I like to use my inbox for examples that illustrate these lessons; today's inbox included a brief cover note with a PDF attachment. (Let's just skip past the "no attachments" rule.) Because I always instruct those I'm mentoring to present their news materials in a format that's easy to copy and paste -- which doesn't describe a PDF file -- I opened the attachment. I wanted to see how bad it was.

It was really bad.

I'm not sure what to call it, but it wasn't the promised "news release." Maybe it was an ad. Maybe it was a flyer. Maybe it was sales collateral. I'm not sure.

The attachment was for a well-known manufacturer of brand name home power tools, so I was extra surprised at how useless it was. (I have higher standards for companies with bigger publicity budgets.)

It was a highly designed collage of seriously-Photoshopped photos of six products. Under each photo was a description of the tool, what it does, and its price. I don't know which products are new. I don't know what makes any of these products different from or better than their competitors. And I don't know what the publicist expects me to do with the short product descriptions -- not that it matters. I don't write about that stuff.

How usable is the content? Not usable at all. I can't right click and save the product photos. I wouldn't be able to use them, either, because of the visual enhancements -- the products are artificially highlighted so they stand out against the environment they're photographed against. The text can't be copied or pasted either -- which is typical of PDFs -- but it clearly wasn't written for editorial purposes. At best, the text might get a journalist thinking about a product category round-up piece. At best. And even that forces me to think too much.

So, publicist at the bigname company, if you want me to start thinking of articles I can write around your products, send me a pitch letter with article idea suggestions. If you want to send me a news release, send me news in a text format that I can copy and paste. And if you want to send me sales collateral, as you've done here, take me off your distribution list. I don't like to waste anyone's time -- yours or mine.

Fire This Publicist!

Here's the last line of a press release I just received: "Editor’s Note: Permission to publish this release online is granted on the condition that a live link to (URL, which I've deleted here to spare the online retailer embarrassment) is included."

Well, gee, online retailer publicist, you've pretty much guaranteed that the release won't get picked up by legitimate media outlets because, quite simply, this isn't how the publicist-news media relationship works.

Journalists and other media gatekeepers do not take direction from publicists, whether they're arrogant and ignorant as this one is, or whether they are helpful and smart. Publicists simply aren't in control.

But wait! There's more!

Sadly for the retailer employing this goof, that usage command wasn't the only mistake. The release didn't identify anything in its content as news. The release, which was promoting a line of exotic pasta, leads with a quote from someone who has never tasted the pasta, but seems to want to. It is followed by comments from two other people who would like to taste it, too, but haven't.

The not-quite-testimonials are followed by a photo of the pasta over which is super-imposed, "Enter to win 5 lbs of (product name)." I never look at photos imbedded into the middle of press releases because I'm more interested in the news, not the pictures, so I didn't even notice the photos the first time -- I scrolled right past them to learn that the comments were submitted as part of a contest to win pasta. Oh. Like I care. But I knew this was blog fodder, so I kept reading, but still didn't find anything I would call "news" or even a call to action that says, "Hey you, go to this URL and enter the contest so you can win free pasta!" Nothing.

And, to make it worse, instead of actually encouraging people to enter the contest by saying how easy it is to enter or encouraging them to enter now by offering a deadline, the "press release" actually says, "While this sounds easy, many of those visiting the blog have written that the task is harder than it at first appears."

OMG. Stop. You're killing me.

It wraps up with two paragraphs that mention three companies, followed by the "rules" statement referenced above.

Let's learn from this

This is a lesson waiting to be taught.... Here's what we can learn from this:

1. Do not impose rules. Journalists don't respond well to publicists who give them orders. Especially orders that show the publicist doesn't know how things work.
2. Make sure you're offering news in your press release. Otherwise, what's the point? Before you sit down to write, be clear on what you want as the end result. It will help you find the right words.
3. Put your news in the 1st or 2nd paragraph. The news in this release might have been that there was an online contest to win pasta, but I'm not even sure about that. And if that was the news, I would have had to go to the Web site for more information before I could report on it, and I would have had to start from scratch with my reporting.
4. Write your press release using a style that you see in the newspaper or online. Nobody in the media -- not even citizen journalists -- writes like this guy, which means his stuff is just plain harder to use.

What's the worst example of a press release you've seen lately? Share the highlights here!

Don't Make This Common Press Release Mistake

I do a lot of press release makeovers, helping entrepreneurs, authors, and nonprofit organization communicators find and highlight the news in their announcement. More often than not, the biggest problem is that the news release writer puts himself at the center of the news, not the product or service. When this happens, the press release uses a format that goes like this: "I'm doing this, here's why I'm doing this, it's really interesting that I'm doing this, here's my life story."

The format you want to use is more like: "Here is the news. Here's why you care about this news. Here's some information about the person/business/organization behind this news."

When thinking about how you will approach your next news release, focus on what will be of greatest interest to those reading the news (your target audience), not on yourself. Sure, it's cool for you that after retiring from a corporate career you started a consulting firm. But that's common. It's not news. What is news, perhaps, is how your business model is built around the zen practices of Buddhist monks, that your office is in a treehouse, or that you specialize in consulting with military veterans.

In most cases, we are not the news. It's what our company does that makes news. I'll be posting more tips later on how to write a news release that works, so come back soon.