Letterhead: Hard copies of news releases are distributed on organizational letterhead. If you work for a PR firm, a client’s news releases go out on their letterhead, not the PR firm’s. If letterhead is not pre-printed with “NEWS RELEASE,” type that prominently in bold, CAPPED, and left or right justified. Letterhead graphics can take up about the top two inches of the paper.
Within the next two to three inches, provide, in some order:
· All pertinent contact information for you and another person who can speak with reporters about the news release’s subject matter. Include names, titles, office landline and mobile phone numbers, email(s), faxes, etc. It is increasingly popular to include this information again at the very end of the news release as well.
· The release line: Given the non-stop cycle of our media ecosystem, embargoed news releases are largely extinct. In this day and age, it almost goes without saying that as soon as you distribute/publish a news release, journalists, bloggers, et al. will consider it immediate fodder. Nevertheless, always default to established journalistic traditions, so type “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” in this space.
· The date of the release’s distribution. This may be different from the date of the action or news of your news release. That information can be dealt with in the release copy.
You’re probably about one-third to halfway down that first page (the practical effect being that the hard copy of your news release will spill over onto a second page) now. The next element is the:
Headline: This is the title of your news release. It should be:
· concise (eight to 10 words),
· specific,
· written in the active present tense, and
· intriguing enough to entice the reader to read into the copy.
It should be formatted in bold, FULLY CAPITALIZED, and center justified. It may also have a slightly larger (e.g., 14-point) font. There is no underlining in AP style, so refrain from doing so in your headline.
Subheads: This is an optional (but increasingly popular) second headline that amplifies the main headline with more details. It usually Initial Capped, italicized, and centered, in the normal 12-point typeface.
Dateline: This is the first part of the first line of your first paragraph – the lead or lede -- of your news release. It provides the location of the action described in the release, or where the release is originating from (e.g., the headquarters city of your organization).[endnoteRef:1] [1: Historically, the date was included in the dateline because news took so long to travel from the sender or the place of action to the receiver. Some organizations will still include the date in the dateline; others will place the date in the contact information area between the organizational letterhead graphic and the headline. I recommend the latter.]
Follow the AP Stylebook formatting: Typically the city is in ALL CAPS, the state abbreviated using Initial Caps. Be aware, however, that the AP’s state abbreviations don’t necessarily follow the US Postal Service’s (USPS) postal abbreviations. For instance, AP uses “Miss.” whereas USPS uses “MS.” AP formats Maryland in datelines as “Md.” whereas USPS goes with “MD.” Some cities (e.g., New York) don’t require the state (or country), and eight states’ names are spelled out. Look under “datelines” and specific states’ names in the AP Manual for how to handle your particular dateline dilemma.
Lead, Body, and Boilerplate Paragraphs: Let’s deal with the actual news release copy elements in the next section, “The How of Your News Release.”
Continuation: Assuming your news release goes beyond one page, place a continuation notation at the bottom of the first page (and all pages except for the last page). Center and type “-more-” immediately after the last line of copy on the first page.
Slugline: At the top of all pages after the first page, type (left justified and CAPITALIZED) an abbreviated version of your headline (note, the PRSG example does not include a shortened headline) and the page number. This is also known as a page slug.
End notation: This is how the reader knows your news release is done. One or two hard returns after the last line of your news release, center and type (without quote marks) “END” or “-30-” or “###.” News releases for the US Naval Academy often cleverly used “-USNA-.”
The How of Your News Release
How do you write a news release? Public relations follows the journalistic writing style, and in the case of most hard-news news articles and news releases, this means using an inverted pyramid structure. This non-narrative structure is quite different from the writing styles discussed in earlier weeks of the course (i.e., the basic five-paragraph format and the five [or so]-sectioned structure for academic papers). Please read the Wilcox and Reber (2013) excerpt, found as a PDF in these weeks’ course folder. Page 132 in particular offers some excellent tips for writing news releases.
The goals of the inverted pyramid structure are to present the reader with information as quickly and straightforwardly as possible, and to present that information in descending importance (as determined by you), from must-have info down to the nice-to-have info (Jeremy Porter, as quoted in Wilcox & Reber, 2013, p. 129).
This graphic illustrates the method to the madness of the inverted pyramid structure. Who are these “readers” who could stop reading at any time? Editors: Newspaper reporters adopted this writing style so their editors could simply shorten article copy by chopping paragraphs from the bottom up, without losing any of the more important or interesting information from the topmost paragraphs. Newspaper readers: Most people usually don’t read much beyond the second paragraph of news articles (Wilcox & Reber, 2013). This arguably holds true for journalists reading news releases sent to them.
![http://www.dotjenna.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/InvertedPyramidGIF.gif]()
As per Jakob Nielsen, a world-renowned web usability guru, “Web users spend 80% of their time looking at information above the ‘page fold.’ Although users do scroll, they allocate only 20% of their attention below the fold.” The page fold on the computer screen is the “initially viewable area” that requires no further clicking (Nielsen Norman Group, 2010).
The previous graphic illustrated the underlying strategy of the inverted pyramid structure. This graphic more specifically illustrates how to execute it tactically:
![http://wp.stockton.edu/esposito/files/2010/10/inverted-pyramid1-300x293.jpg]()
Below is copy from an unformatted news release. We’re going to dissect the content of its inverted pyramid structure, graf by graf.
MAJOR FINANCIAL FIRM NAMES NEW PRESIDENT
Today, the board of directors of Connors-Walsh, Inc., one of the world’s premiere financial planning companies, voted to elect a new president and chief operating officer of the firm.
Frances A. Kennedy was chosen to replace Allan Edwards, who has declared his retirement and will leave his current post after having served as president for a total of 20 years. Kennedy will assume her many responsibilities as president in a few weeks, on March 1.
Kennedy has the same sort of interests that the Connors-Walsh company does and a vast amount of financial planning and insurance knowledge since she has worked in the field for a number of years. Prior to joining Connors-Walsh, Kennedy was the executive vice president of Equity, Inc., a major life insurance company, for eight years, and she also served as a top executive for many other financial and estate planning organizations, including Nathan-Thomas, Inc., an investment firm that has offices across the nation and throughout the U.S.
With a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Syracuse University and a master’s in business administration from Cornell University, Kennedy is also a member of many groups and organizations whose members work in the financial planning arena. These groups are the National Financial Planners Association, of which she was a former president and still a member; the Boston Business Executives; the New England Insurance Association, a group she served on the board for; and the International Association of Investment Bankers.
Connors-Walsh is a leading provider of life insurance and business pension plans in the U.S. The firm’s services encompass a wide variety of different areas such as mutual fund management, real estate investment, and financial and correspondent brokerage services. The corporation is located in Hartford, Conn.
The Lead
The base paragraph of the inverted pyramid provides an overview of the action or news in the news release. It should provide basic details that address some combination of the 5 W’s (and 1 H) of journalism: Who, Where, What, Why, When, and How?
This requires exercising some judgment about what is the most newsworthy, crucial, or otherwise superlative information to put in this marquee paragraph. Perhaps it’s the “who” and the “when” that form the news peg or hook. Write your lead around them and attend to the lesser Ws and Hs in later paragraphs. Avoid Too Much Information leads, replete with all 5 Ws and the 1 (or 2) H(s). Instead, consider dividing your news hook between two lead grafs, rather than one jampacked single-lead graf.
Who: are the individuals or groups involved in and/or affected by the news or action of your release?
Where: is the action is happening (or where did it happen)? This information is sometimes communicated via the dateline.
What: is the news or action that is the subject of your release? This is your news peg, news hook, story tip, the actual “thing” that is newsworthy.
Why: did this news or action come to pass? What’s the reason this happened?
When: did this news or action occur? This information is conveyed by including the date/timing of the “what” in your lead or another graf. Do not use “today,” “tonight,” “tomorrow,” “yesterday,” etc. in copy. As per the AP stylebook for “today, tonight” (p. 272): Use only in direct quotations and in phrases that do not refer to a specific day: “Customs today are different from those of a century ago.” Use the day of the week in copy, not today or tonight.
Your news release should always have the date it was released on it as well.
How: did this news or action come to pass? What’s the process by which this happened?
To this venerable list, let’s add another “H” that may need to be addressed:
How much: did this cost or will it cost? And whom will it cost (e.g., taxpayers)? Questions about price tags often come into play.
Rules of thumb for leads:
· One to three sentences (about three to five lines of copy).
· Use strong, active, declarative sentences.
· Use a simple sentence structure with minimal use of dependent clauses.
· Could serve as a stand-alone paragraph (e.g., “above the fold” in an online publication), if need be, but – fingers crossed – it should entice readers to read more.
This advice is predicated on your writing a straight summary lead (Wilcox & Reber, 2013). This is the “just the facts, ma’am” kind of lead: “United Airlines announced today that Richard B. Hirst has been named senior vice president of corporate affairs and general counsel” (p. 127).
Two other types of leads are:
1. Informal lead: This lead style lends itself well to a timely but not necessarily hard-news news peg. Factual information is presented more informally: “A new national survey finds as parents celebrate their child’s graduation, they and their children may not be prepared for all the ‘real-world’ costs…” (Wilcox & Reber, 2013, p. 127).
2. Feature lead: The first paragraph hooks the reader to continue reading through a delayed lead, in which the actual news peg/hook is presented two or three paragraphs down. The feature lead is more appropriate for softer topical/human interest news that are not necessarily timely and may be directed at specialized sections of the newspaper: “What makes maps so hypnotic? Is it their endless details that magically draws us in…?” (p. 127).
The two-graf lead from our guinea pig news release needs some work. The Ws and Hs have been color coded as:
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