Writing news releases: It's "the news and nothing but the news"

During a recent session of my media writing class, I asked the group to name the most important aspect of a news release. I received lots of good answers: accuracy, conciseness, readability, etc. But I didn't get the response I was looking for from my students, many of whom are prospective public relations practitioners.

The most important element of a news release is that it contains news. That may sound simplistic, but an astounding number of news releases don't convey news. They're ads or self-serving bits of promotion that have been tarted up to look like news releases. They provide details on sales campaigns, pricing plans, a change in a product line or some other bit of information that is rarely of any interest to news outlets.

You won't trick many editors or news directors into running a free ad for you on their news pages or in their newscasts. In fact, if you send out enough news-less news releases to the same media outlets, you'll soon lose your credibility with them.

As someone who spent more than two decades in the news business and who has looked at thousands of news releases, I can tell you that promotional fluff will be spotted in seconds and instantly pitched into the trash or erased from an e-mail inbox.

A book could be written on writing news releases. But if you start from the standpoint of issuing them only when you have actual news to convey and then putting that information at the very beginning of the release, you'll have licked the biggest obstacle to getting a placement.

So, what's news? Generally speaking it's any event or occurrence that could be described as new, unusual or of interest to a fairly broad audience of news readers or listeners. Your new pricing plan or branding effort probably isn't news. Your decision to hire a new CEO, add employees or bricks and mortar probably is. To help you establish a better sense of what constitutes news, routinely read the publications and Web sites where you'd like your news to appear. You'll soon get the idea of what makes it on the page and what doesn't.