Editorial Edge
Practical observations from more than 40 years in the business of news.
Articles about journalism, media relations, news generation and dealing with journalists, drawing on experience from inside newsrooms and on the other side of the media relationship.
What makes a story newsworthy—and why most businesses get it wrong?
The murder of a policeman was covered up on the orders of the Prime Minister and Home Secretary to protect the Prince of Wales.
Have I got your attention? Want to know more? Then that’s exactly what your announcement to the media should do.
This is one of my favourite intros to a story I wrote about a new book. It attracted enough attention to appear in newspapers across the UK and abroad.
Every story needs a hook
As a reporter and editor who has sat on the news desks of several UK national newspapers - including The Times, Daily Telegraph and Independent - I can tell you the vast majority of press releases sent to the media fail to get the attention they deserve.
Anything that starts with the words “we are delighted to announce”, or a variation thereof, almost always gets immediately spiked. For anyone not acquainted with newspaper vocabulary, ‘spiked’ means deleted or binned.
Competing for attention
Even now, as a working journalist and editor of two magazines, I receive more than 100 press releases per day, plus numerous other emails from would-be contributors, readers and colleagues. If your press release doesn’t grab my attention in the first 5 seconds the chances are I won’t spend any more time on it.
Every news desk is inundated with information overload. Alongside emails and pitches from numerous companies and public relations people, the copy-taster - the person delegated that day to take the first pass at incoming information - also has to monitor the news wires.
The wires get top priority, and depending on the media outlet could include news stories from the Press Association, Reuters, Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and numerous independent news agencies and freelance journalists. That’s several hundred stories a day.
In 2026 news editors also have to keep an eye on social media channels, television and radio broadcasts, relevant blogs and influencer sites, adding to the workload in already understaffed and depleted newsrooms.
All of this means that unless you get my attention in the first line or paragraph the odds are heavily stacked against you.
The ‘so what?’ test
Even if you get my attention, the next hurdle is to keep it. And that means providing something I want. The first paragraph of any story should be an invitation. Like a shop window display, it serves to entice the customer or reader inside.
The first paragraph should make me want to read the second, and then the third and so on. A story doesn’t have to be long but it does have to pass the ‘so what test’. The first questions I, or any journalist is likely to ask themselves while reading a ‘press release’, are:
- What does this mean?
- Will it interest my audience?
- What difference will it make?
- What’s new or unique about it?
If the answer to any of those questions isn’t immediately obvious then your story is heading for the spike.
Ordinary isn’t a story
Journalists deal in the unexpected, unusual and unwanted. We like superlatives ‘the first’, ‘the last’, ‘the best’, ‘the worst’ and such like.
Ordinary isn’t a story. Nobody reports on the tens of thousands of passenger planes that land safely every day - but if just one has an emergency, that’s a story!
And it’s a story because it involves people. There’s an old adage in every newsroom - ‘if it bleeds, it leads’. Human interest trumps almost everything.
Writing a press release saying that you are ‘pleased to announce’ that Joe Bloggs has just been appointed CEO of Acme Product Ltd might get a mention in a trade paper or blog, but it won’t make most media outlets.
However, saying something like: ‘A company specialising in new drugs that could save the lives of up to 10,000 children a year has just appointed a new boss to step up production. Joe Bloggs, a specialist in supply logistics, has taken over as CEO of Acme Ltd with a mission to…”
That would get my attention. Combine it with some facts and figures, a case study, comments from third-party sources and some good-quality news images and the chances of your announcement going from the spike or a single paragraph to a page lead and headline news have just improved immensely.
The story in the detail
A reason why a lot of organisations fail to get the publicity they deserve is because they don’t know what they’ve got, in terms of newsworthy stories. Sometimes all it takes is a single word or a cultural reference to make a major difference.
A fresh pair of eyes and a journalistic mind can often create a story you didn’t realise existed.
A few years ago I interviewed the boss of a medical recruitment firm about the problem of filling GP roles, especially in rural practices. He had lots of statistics, graphs and diagrams but no attention-grabbing hook.
Sensing there was a story I asked if he thought young medics were being put off becoming GPs because of an outdated image of rural doctors as characters in Dr Finlay’s Casebook? (This used to be a popular television series based on the books by A.J. Cronin). When he agreed that could be a reason I knew I had a story.
I wrote it up as: “The Dr Finlay's Casebook image of country doctors is hindering attempts to solve the nation’s GP crisis…” and secured coverage in several newspapers.
I knew by referencing the tv series picture desks could, if necessary, use images from the show to illustrate the story, and it provided a cultural hook for lay readers to immediately understand.
In more than 40 years I’ve realised almost every business has a story, they just need to know how to tell it.
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What’s the difference between a press release and a story journalists actually want?
No, it’s not a joke - especially if you’ve spent a lot of time and/or money trying to get media interest.
The truth is, the two are not necessarily dissimilar. As a journalist who receives hundreds of press releases per week I am aware that somewhere in there could be a nugget of gold. I just don’t always have time to go searching for it.
“I don’t know what I want until I see it” is a phrase I heard more than once from the editor of a national paper at the morning news conference. And he was right!
Media outlets don’t have a complete plan of what they are going to cover from one day to the next, and that is exactly why your press release needs to tell us what you think the story is.
I can confirm what journalists don’t want! We are never going to like anything that fails the ‘so what’ test, announcements that are little more than advertisements, pages of text that read like puff pieces to satisfy the ego of faceless bosses, or press releases that appear to have been sent to numerous media outlets to justify the fees charged by spray and pray PR services.
I have always thought there are two ways for a company to get noticed by the media - the Press Release and the News Release.
The Press Release
As a recipient and sometime writer of press releases I think of them as an invitation to engage and write about the company, organisation, product or service. It is not usually a full story, just a suggestion or idea that needs work.
A press release should contain an attention-grabbing headline. I like to see a subject line and a brief summary introduction highlighting the main points in bullet form. It should pass the ‘so what’ test in the first paragraph, preferably in no more than 30 words.
The whole press release doesn’t need to be much more than 300 words, so long as it answers the basic questions of who, what, where, when, why and how that’s enough.
Any quotes should be short, sharp and get to the point quickly. No more than a sentence or two. They should read as though somebody actually said the words.
Too many corporate press releases contain ‘Frankenstein’ quotes. These are overly long passages that have passed through the hands of several department heads, all wanting to get their little bit included. That usually results in a word salad that no human being ever said naturally. If any of it gets used it will be paraphrased and at best a few cherry-picked words will appear in quotes. If that happens don’t complain about being quoted out of context!
If there is a good case study and photos to go with the press release, say so, or include low-res examples of the images in the body of the email. If I don’t know you, or I am not expecting anything from you, I probably won’t open any attachments.
At the end of the press release, a lot of people add ‘Notes’, and this is usually the first thing that gets cut out. If the information contained in the notes is important and relevant to the story, it should be in the main body of the release.
As it is an invitation to engage, every press release should contain contact details of somebody who can answer queries or is willing to be interviewed. Ideally there should be a telephone number, not just an email, and it should be operational out-of-hours. Most journalists do not work 9am to 5pm.
A lot of opportunities are missed because the contact on the press release is unavailable, can’t be reached after 5pm or on a weekend. Worse still, they’ve put out the press release and immediately gone on holiday.
The News Release
In today’s media world, when outlets are short-staffed and journalists are under increasing pressure to ‘churn out’ content, a fully written story, aka a news release, is more likely to be used.
A good news release is written as if it is a finished news story, incorporating all the pointers from above, but with quotes from third-party sources. These are often quotes from partner organisations, or client endorsements.
Ideally, quotes from two or three named people are good, but keep them short. No more than a paragraph at most so don’t waste words with sentences that start with: “We are pleased to partner with…or “I am delighted to work alongside…”.
Instead of fluffy quotes get straight to the point of why this story matters, what difference it will make, what the benefit is of what you are promoting.
Most page leads in newspapers average between 300 and 550 words. Whenever I was commissioned by the Associated Press to cover an event or write a story I was usually briefed to file no more than around 400 words, include two or three named sources with quotes of one or two short sentences. Rarely was I asked to write 600 words or more.
If possible include a case study and related images. Good photographs can make the difference between a story being ignored or used.
As with the press release ensure there is always out-of-hours contact details at the bottom of the news release.
Generally, the difference between a press release being ignored or getting picked up by a journalist almost always comes down to how that story is flagged up and told, and that is something that comes from experience.
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If you want to learn more about how to identify and shape stories that attract media attention come and join one of Flag Media’s small, practical sessions on how to work with the media.
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