Most press releases are never read past the first paragraph. In fact, according to Muck Rack (2024), journalists receive an average of 50–100 pitches and press releases every single day, and the majority are deleted within seconds. Yet some releases consistently land front-page coverage, broadcast slots, and viral online features. The difference is rarely the story itself. It is almost always the writing.
Why Most Press Releases Fail Before They Begin
Here is the brutal truth about press releases: most of them are written for the wrong person. They are written for the CEO who needs to feel proud of the announcement, for the legal team who needs to feel safe, and for the marketing director who wants the brand to sound impressive. They are almost never written for the one person who actually decides if they get used: a journalist sitting at a desk in Wapping or White City with 80 unread emails and a 4pm deadline. Until you fix that fundamental misalignment, no amount of distribution budget will save you.
A press release is not a company newsletter. It is not a sales brochure. It is journalism-ready copy, handed to a professional editor as a time-saving gift. If it does not read like something they could file with minimal editing, it gets deleted. Full stop.
PR1202-01: Writing Press Releases That Get Picked Up, Key Concepts
When you internalise that shift in perspective, that you are not broadcasting to the public but pitching to a professional editor under deadline pressure, everything about how you write changes.
According to the CIPR State of the Profession Report (2024), 67% of communications professionals say media relations remains one of the top three most valuable PR disciplines. Yet the same report notes a significant skills gap in crafting press materials that meet modern editorial standards. The gap is not in knowing what a press release is. It is in knowing how to write one that actually gets used.
Consider the difference between how two organisations might announce the same event. Company A sends a release headlined "XYZ Ltd Celebrates Its 20th Anniversary", a statement of fact that is relevant only to the company itself. Company B headlines the same occasion "Sheffield Manufacturer That Started in a Garage Now Employs 400 People and Exports to 32 Countries." One of those releases will be deleted immediately. The other has a genuine story at its centre: growth, resilience, local pride, international reach. The underlying facts are identical. The editorial instinct is what differs.
This editorial instinct, the ability to see your organisation's activity through the eyes of a disinterested journalist, is the single most transferable skill in PR writing. It cannot be faked with clever adjectives, and it cannot be compensated for by distribution volume. Either you have found the story, or you have not.
The Anatomy of a Newsworthy Press Release
Before putting a single word on the page, you need to answer one question honestly: Would a journalist at a relevant publication consider this genuinely interesting to their readers?
If the answer is "probably not," no amount of clever writing will save you. But if you have a real story, and most organisations do, they simply fail to recognise it, then structure and craft are what separate coverage from the recycling bin.
The Inverted Pyramid Model
The most reliable framework for press release writing is the Inverted Pyramid Model, borrowed directly from traditional news journalism. The principle is straightforward:
Top of the pyramid (widest): The most important information, the who, what, where, when, why, and how
Middle section: Supporting detail, context, and quotes
Bottom of the pyramid (narrowest): Background information, boilerplate, and supplementary facts
Journalists are trained to cut copy from the bottom up. If your most important information is buried in paragraph four, it will never be seen. Every sentence you write should earn its place by answering the reader's unspoken question: Why does this matter?
The model also reflects how readers consume news digitally. Eye-tracking research by the Nielsen Norman Group consistently shows that online readers scan headlines and first paragraphs before deciding to commit to a full article. If your lead does not reward that scan, the story is gone, regardless of how compelling the remainder might be.
The Five Core Elements
A well-constructed press release contains five non-negotiable elements:
1. A Headline That Does the Work
Your headline should communicate the story in under 12 words and contain a verb. "Local Business Celebrates Anniversary" tells a journalist nothing they care about. "Manchester Bakery Donates 10,000 Loaves to Food Banks in Record Drive" is a story. Notice the specificity: a number, a named action, a named recipient, and a scale qualifier. Every one of those details does editorial work. When writing for online distribution, also consider if your headline contains a naturally searchable phrase, not at the expense of clarity, but as an additional layer of value.
2. A Dateline and Lead Paragraph
The lead paragraph should contain the full story in 40–60 words. If a journalist read only this paragraph, they should know exactly what happened and why it matters. Include the city or location and the date. The dateline format used in British press releases is typically: CITY, DD Month YYYY : followed immediately by the first sentence of the story. Do not waste this space on context or company history.
3. The Supporting Body
Two to three paragraphs that expand on the lead, provide context, add data, and explain implications. This is where you justify the story's importance. Think in layers: paragraph two might provide the "how" and "since when"; paragraph three might introduce sector context or a comparison that makes the news feel significant at scale.
4. Quotes
Quotes serve a specific purpose: they add human voice and opinion, not information. A quote should say something that cannot be conveyed as a plain fact. "We are thrilled to announce this partnership" is not a quote, it is filler. "This partnership means families in Brixton will have access to affordable childcare for the first time in fifteen years" is a quote worth printing. The test for any quote is simple: could this sentence appear in the body copy without attribution? If yes, it belongs in the body copy. If only a named individual could credibly say it, it belongs as a quote.
5. The Boilerplate and Contact Details
A brief "About [Organisation]" paragraph at the foot of every release, followed by a named press contact with a direct phone number and email address. Journalists working to a deadline will not chase you. If your contact details are unclear, the story dies. The boilerplate should be under 75 words and updated at least quarterly. Stale boilerplates that still list outdated statistics or former brand messaging undermine your credibility before the journalist has even picked up the phone.
Understanding Newsworthiness: The Six News Values
Journalism schools teach that every story derives its value from one or more of six classical news values, originally articulated by Galtung and Ruge (1965) and updated repeatedly since. Understanding these is not academic. It is a practical diagnostic tool for every release you write.
Timeliness: Is this happening now, or is it pegged to something current? A product launch is more newsworthy if it coincides with a relevant cultural moment, regulatory change, or seasonal hook.
Proximity: Does this affect the audience of the target publication geographically or professionally? A story about rising energy costs for manufacturers is far more compelling in a Midlands trade title than in a London lifestyle magazine.
Prominence: Does it involve recognisable names, brands, or institutions? A partnership between two unknown startups is harder to place than one involving a well-known brand, unless the story of those startups is itself compelling.
Consequence: What changes as a result of this news? How many people are affected, and how significantly?
Human Interest: Is there a person at the centre of this story whose experience a reader can connect with emotionally? Human interest is the engine of consumer PR and increasingly important even in B2B media.
Conflict or Tension: Does this story involve a challenge overcome, a problem solved, or a position taken? Tension creates narrative momentum. "We launched a product" is inert. "We built a product after the industry told us it couldn't be done" has dramatic structure.
Before writing a release, map your story against these six values. The more it satisfies, the stronger your case for coverage, and the more angles you have to offer different outlets.
Common Mistakes Practitioners Make
Warning
These are the five errors that most reliably ensure your press release ends up in the bin. Recognising them is the first step to eliminating them permanently.
Mistake 1: Writing for the CEO, Not the Journalist
Internal approval processes often result in press releases that are rewritten to satisfy senior stakeholders rather than editorial standards. The result is promotional language, corporate jargon, and a lead paragraph that talks about how "excited" the company is rather than what actually happened. Write for the journalist. Manage stakeholders separately. One practical approach used by senior PR professionals is to present an internal version (which can contain the corporate language that satisfies stakeholders) alongside the outgoing version, explaining explicitly why the two differ. This protects editorial quality whilst managing internal politics.
Mistake 2: Burying the News
Many releases spend the first paragraph explaining who the company is before they ever mention the news. Journalists do not need a company biography. They need the story immediately. Start with the most compelling fact you have. A useful diagnostic: cover up everything except your first paragraph and ask a colleague who has no context to tell you what the story is. If they cannot do it, rewrite.
Mistake 3: Over-quoting and Under-sourcing
A release with four quotes from four different executives and no supporting data reads as a vanity exercise. One strong, attributed quote from the most credible voice in the story, supported by real statistics or research, is far more persuasive. If your release must include quotes from multiple stakeholders (as is often necessary in partnership announcements), ensure each quote says something distinctly different and that no two quotes overlap in substance.
Mistake 4: Ignoring Relevance Targeting
Sending the same release to a national tabloid, a trade publication, and a local weekly without any customisation suggests you have not thought about why each outlet should care. According to Cision's State of the Media Report (2024), 73% of journalists say irrelevant pitches are the single biggest frustration they have with PR professionals. A small investment of time in writing outlet-specific angle notes, even a single personalised paragraph in the covering email, can be the difference between opening and deletion.
Mistake 5: Forgetting the Multimedia Assets
Modern newsrooms are under-resourced and time-pressured. A release accompanied by high-resolution images, a short video clip, or an infographic is significantly more likely to be used. According to PR Newswire's editorial data (2023), press releases that include multimedia assets receive up to 9.7 times more views than text-only releases. Images should be provided at a minimum of 300dpi for print and 1920px wide for digital. Include a caption for every image, and never embed images within the release document itself. Link to a downloadable folder instead.
Frameworks Worth Knowing
Beyond the Inverted Pyramid, two additional frameworks are useful for shaping your release before you write:
The TRUTH Framework (Bowen, 2019)
Developed in academic PR literature and widely adopted in agency practice: Timeliness, Readability, Uniqueness, Trend alignment, and Human interest. Score your proposed story against each criterion before committing to a release. If it does not score at least three out of five, reconsider if a press release is the right vehicle. It may be that the story is better suited to a thought-leadership article, a case study, or a backgrounder distributed to a smaller number of highly targeted contacts.
The "So What?" Test
After every paragraph, ask yourself: "So what?" If you cannot answer that question on behalf of a journalist's reader, rewrite the paragraph or cut it. This is a technique used widely in broadcast journalism training and is equally applicable to written press materials. Some practitioners find it helpful to write the "so what" answers in the margins of a draft before editing. This surfaces the implicit value that good editing makes explicit.
Byter Tip
Byter Insider: We worked with a hospitality group launching a new cocktail bar concept in Shoreditch. Their original release headline read "The Collective Group Announces Opening of New Venue in East London." Deleted on sight. We ran the story through the Hook-Hold-Convert Method, which we use for all content at Byter: hook in the first line, hold with compelling detail, close with a clear reason to act. We rewrote the headline as "The East London Bar Serving Only Drinks You Can't Google, Opening March 2024." The same story, reframed around genuine curiosity and exclusivity. It landed features in Time Out London, the Evening Standard online, and two national lifestyle titles. Total press coverage value was assessed at over £40,000. Not because the venue was more interesting the second time around, but because the writing finally gave journalists something their readers would actually stop scrolling for.
PR1202-01: The TRUTH Framework, scoring your story before you write
Recommended Tools for Press Release Professionals
Muck Rack, The industry-standard tool for identifying the right journalist for a given story. Its database allows you to search by beat, publication, and recent coverage, making targeted distribution far more precise than generic press lists. Muck Rack also shows you a journalist's most recent articles, so you can reference their work authentically in a covering note. This is one of the most effective ways to demonstrate genuine relevance, and it takes less than three minutes to do properly.
Cision, Widely used across UK agencies for distribution, media monitoring, and coverage reporting. Useful for measuring the reach and pickup of releases post-distribution. Cision's media monitoring function allows you to track not just your own coverage but competitor activity, which is invaluable for timing and angle differentiation.
Hemingway Editor (hemingwayapp.com), A free writing tool that highlights passive voice, overly complex sentences, and readability issues. Invaluable for self-editing press releases before they leave your desk. Aim for a Flesch-Kincaid reading grade of 8 or below for consumer releases, and no higher than 10 for trade or professional media.
Google Trends, Free and often underused. Checking if your story topic is currently trending gives you intelligence about if a journalist is likely to find it timely and relevant right now. You can also use Google Trends to identify related search terms that might shape your headline or lead paragraph for digital pickup.
Dropbox or Google Drive (shared media asset folders), Create a dedicated folder of high-resolution images, logos, and supporting assets for every release. Include the link in the release itself so journalists can access what they need instantly. Organise the folder clearly: separate subfolders for portraits, product images, location shots, and brand assets. Add a brief README file explaining what each asset shows and its copyright status.
ResponseSource, A UK-specific platform where journalists post requests for sources, case studies, and expert comment. It is used extensively by editorial teams at titles including The Guardian, The Telegraph, and a wide range of specialist trade publications. Monitoring these alerts gives you a real-time window into what stories journalists are actively building, allowing you to respond with relevant information from your own clients or organisation. For UK practitioners, this is one of the most underutilised tools available. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) also publishes regular rulings that often generate journalist enquiries on ResponseSource, particularly for brands in regulated sectors. If your clients operate in financial services, health, or food and drink, monitoring these categories specifically will surface timely opportunities.
Tailoring Your Release for Different Media
A business acquisition story plays differently in The Financial Times than it does in a regional title or an industry trade magazine. The facts may be identical, but the angle, the lead, and even the quote selection should shift depending on the outlet.
The Byter Brief, our internal campaign planning framework, requires us to specify target channels and audience before a single word of copy is written. The same discipline applies to press releases. You should know exactly which publication you are writing for before you settle on a headline, because a headline written for The Times business desk is a different headline to one written for a Manchester-based B2B trade title. Committing to a target publication first forces better editorial decisions at every stage.
For national broadsheets: Lead with market significance, economic impact, or policy implications. Broadsheet journalists deal in consequence at scale. Make clear why this story matters beyond the organisation itself.
For trade publications: Lead with industry-specific implications. What does this mean for the sector, for competitors, for regulation? Trade journalists write for professional audiences who already know the market. Skip the basics and go straight to the strategic significance.
For regional titles: Lead with local jobs, local people, and community impact. Regional editors ask one question above all others: does this affect people in our patch? If you cannot answer that clearly, you have not found the local angle yet.
For online news platforms and blogs: Consider SEO. Include naturally placed keywords in your headline and lead paragraph. Think about which search terms a reader might use to find this story organically. Online platforms also tend to be more receptive to data-led stories that can be easily presented in list formats or with embedded visuals.
For broadcast media (radio and television): The requirements here differ significantly from print. Broadcast journalists need a spokesperson who is available, articulate, and able to speak in short, quotable sentences on camera or down a phone line. A press release aimed at broadcast should flag this availability explicitly and provide a mobile number for the named spokesperson. It should also be shorter. Two paragraphs and a quote is sufficient as an initial contact.
PR1202-01: Adapting the same story for five different media types, with real angle examples
Timing and Distribution Strategy
Even a well-written release can fail if it lands at the wrong time. Timing is a craft in itself.
Best days to distribute: Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday consistently outperform Monday and Friday for press release pickup. Monday is dominated by weekend news catch-up. Friday releases frequently miss the week's news cycle entirely and are rarely revisited on Monday.
Best times to send: Between 08:00 and 10:00 is widely regarded as the optimal window, allowing journalists to incorporate your release into their morning editorial planning meeting. Avoid sending after 16:00 on any day. Your release will almost certainly be buried beneath overnight incoming.
Embargo strategy: For genuinely significant stories, consider placing the release under embargo, that is, sharing it with selected journalists 24–48 hours in advance on the understanding that they will not publish until a specified time. Embargo releases give journalists time to research, write longer features, and arrange interviews. The result is often fuller, more considered coverage. Embargoes only work with journalists you trust and who trust you. A broken embargo on a first contact damages the relationship immediately.
News avoidance dates: Always check the parliamentary and political calendar, major sporting fixtures (particularly the FA Cup, Six Nations, or a major test match), and any large scheduled news events before sending a release. Competing with a Budget statement or a major election result for editorial space is a battle you will almost always lose. The UK Parliamentary recess calendar, available on parliament.uk, is worth bookmarking. Political journalists disappear from their desks during recess, and general news desks often run skeleton crews during the same periods, which can work either for or against you depending on the nature of your story.
Key Takeaways
A press release is a piece of journalism-ready content, not a company announcement dressed in formal language
The Inverted Pyramid Model ensures your most important information appears first, where it will always be read
Headlines must contain a verb and communicate the story in under 12 words
Quotes should add human voice and opinion, never information that belongs in the body copy
The six classical news values (timeliness, proximity, prominence, consequence, human interest, conflict) are a practical diagnostic tool for every story you consider
The five most common mistakes all stem from writing for internal audiences rather than editorial ones
Multimedia assets dramatically increase both views and pickup rates. Provide them proactively and make them easy to download
Targeted, personalised distribution always outperforms mass sending
The TRUTH Framework and the "So What?" Test are practical quality checks before any release goes out
Timing and distribution strategy are as important as the quality of the writing itself