by Kirsty Henderson
A press release is a short piece of text that is provided to journalists and editors to encourage them to write about your story.
You should send a press release when you have something your think is newsworthy and you think the outlet would like to write about it. If your piece of news or event is not something the press would write about you wont need a press release. Some example events where you may want to send a press release:
The headline is the most important part of the press release. Firstly, your headline will usually be the subject of your email which you send to your media contacts. If the headline isn't well written and interesting, they wont open your email, meaning everything else you write won’t even be read. Once you have got them to open the email, the headline also needs to be good enough to make them read past it to the rest of the information.
Every journalist should be able to read the headline and immediately understand what your story is. They should also be persuaded to open the email and read further. You also have to do this in as few words as possible. Headline should be no more than one sentence or two very short phrases interrupted with a full stop.
The lead comes directly after the headline and is designed to intrigue the reader further, giving them a bit more detail about the story. If they are interested by the headline they will often continue to read the lead afterwards. It needs to be a short sentence or a few sentences, but again, should get to the point and provide all necessary information in a concise way.
The first paragraph of the press release can provide further information that complements facts introduced in the lead, ex. the methodology of the research and its other results. Again, it should be clear what the story is if someone only reads the first paragraph and nothing else.
The basic questions you can ask yourself in order to sum up what you want to communicate are: who (did something), what (did they do), where, when, why and what for. So for example you can write that (who) activists of your organisation (what) are organizing a protest (where) in front of a certain shop (when) on Saturday and that (why) they are protesting because the brand is still using eggs from caged hens and (what for) they want to inform their clients about it.
The date that you send the press release should be noted at the top of your email. This shows the journalist that the information is new and if they open the email the day you sent it, they can see that the information below is still current i.e. still “news.”