How to write a press release

When we write press releases, our aim is to write them in the style of the publication we’re sending them to.

The reasoning is straightforward – it means less work is required by a journalist.

Writing to style is a skill learned quickly by journalists, and the teaching of journalism – at least, the teaching of story construction – has barely changed in recent decades.

This means that there is a familiarity about most news stories – and there are very good reasons for this.

So today, dear readers, I’m going to give you some top tips on how to write your press release which should make it more successful in terms of getting your news printed. 

1. Make sure it’s a story appropriate to the publication you’re writing for. For this newspaper to be interested, it needs to feature people or businesses or a case study that is rooted in East Lancashire. 
2. In a joke, the punchline comes at the end. In a news story it comes at the beginning – tell the story in your first two paragraphs; then tell it again. 
3. The key elements of a news story are: Who, What, Why, Where, When. Rare are the news stories that do not feature these elements in the top two paragraphs. 
4. News stories, when being cut to fit the space on the page, are almost always cut from the end of the story. So all the important stuff needs to come first. 
5. Keep it short and simple. Most newspapers, whether local, regional, tabloid or broadsheet average no more than 25 or 30 words to a paragraph and keep it to one sentence per paragraph. 
6. When you’ve written your story, go back and see what can be taken out without losing the sense or direction of it. Story count – the number of stories on a page – is important to publications. Small space is better than no space. 
7. Remember your ABC – be Accurate, be Brief, be Clear. Use everyday language and convert jargon into terminology readers will understand. 
8. Use quotes. Quotations make stories human. All news stories should feature people, because people are interested in people and not in things.
9. Supply a photograph. As I’ve said more times than I care to remember, supplying a good quality (preferably professional) image with your news release makes it more likely to appear and more likely to get more space.
10. Read newspapers. Get a feel for their approach. Test these ideas by looking at news stories in this paper.

Next month, I’ll show you the best ways of presenting a press release to make it attractive to journalists. But if you can’t wait that long, email me at richard.slater@slaterpr.co.uk and I’ll send you a model method.