As for the traditional role of releases, written well, they can still be a succinct way of telling your story.

Thinking about what’s going on in newsrooms nowadays, that call seems even more insensitive. (And I wonder if the thank-yous people here are getting are sincere or sarcastic.) There are so few staff in newsrooms anymore that most people are doing about 3 or 4 jobs, with little or no time to fend off all the PR people who would be calling them if every press release generated a follow-up call.

Fact is, if your email has a pithy subject line (not catchy, but substantive) and your email is succinct and clear, and your story actually worth covering, you will get coverage without nagging someone to take a second look at that release.

Any ifd not convinced I’ve set up a do it yourself news release kit on http://www.eventandroadshowplanners.com

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Lots of compliments on these thoughts. Mine, and I’m going to come at it as a corporate person responsible for press relations: 1. A press release in gestation is a forcing mechanism. It forces everyone in the organization to articulate what the news is or is not. You’d be surprised at what has been previously briefed to the press officer doesn’t actually exist. Seeing a big fat headline in a release draft will scare the daylights out of the meek and some internal truth will emerge. 2. If in fact there is a shred of truth in the announcement, but the troops haven’t been mobilized to execute, a global release on Business Wire will quickly get them mobilized. 3. Most product, service and customer win releases have terrific value in the hands of the sales force. Frankly, their greatest value is often as marketing communications deliverables. If wordy, gorp-laden brochures are the standard (see Circular File), then a 1.2 page concise press release will stand tall and the sales team will love it. Doesn’t matter where you released it or placed it, as long as they have a copy, they’ll use it. 4. And to the same point, employees like to know that stuff is going on, and even if the news is not good, we communications people know how to use the same words to tell the employees, shareholders, etc., what’s going on ahead of time. 5. I’ve always sent a copy of a press release that I distribute to a carefully-built list of journalists within seconds of posting it — with a personal note that explains what it means. As suggested by this thread, most releases have no real value to journalists. So I always send the release to them and say this means this or that, and I essentially toss out story ideas. It’s actually fairly liberating. Once the release has been tortured by however many internal authorities and blessed, I can finally go to my people on the list and say, “you know what? Here’s what it means.” When I started doing this, my phone started ringing. Just posting a release and then walking away? — nothing (unless the news was bad, really confusing and/or it was earnings time).