What is a press release?

Posted: 2012-06-10 in How To    |   Tagged: media release, news release, press release, press release format

A better explanation of the press release than the one provided by Wikipedia. By @TopLineFounder

The subject might seem a bit elementary, but the term ‘what is a press release’ was searched on Google a whopping 110,000 times in the last month in the UK alone.  Furthermore, the explanation provided by Wikipedia is, as far as I’m concerned, sub-standard and targeted at an American audience. So I thought the B2B PR Blog could do better and have therefore offered a more UK-user-friendly alternative.

My definition of a press release:

A press release (also known as a news release or a media release) is a document written in a (relatively) standardised format that is designed to convey an organisation’s news easily to journalists. The idea is that journalists/broadcasters/bloggers can use the press release as the basis of their story.

A journalist should be able to gather the following information from your press release:

• The newsworthy bit about the story (I’ll be blogging on what makes news tomorrow).
• The facts of the story.
• Where to get more information.

Format of a press release:

Most press releases follow a similar format, that will likely include these elements:

• Heading
• Date of release
• Location of release
• Announcement and description of news
• Quotes (e.g. from CEO, client, analyst or other thought leader)
• Contact details for additional information
• Boilerplates (standard ‘about-us-style’ descriptions of the organisations involved). 

Read our other posts on press releases.

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