FIRST Advisers Corporate Communications

Some see it as axiomatic that the people within a company are best placed to draft a press release or other piece of external communication.

After all, who better to write the news than those on the inside: the people who were responsible for it, were there from the beginning and understand the details?

There can also be a strong sense of ownership: we work in the business and we made this happen, so we should be the ones to draft the announcement.

Unfortunately, some of the most turgid, impenetrable media releases were written by those who were most passionate and knowledgeable about their subject.

A press release is primarily concerned with conveying information that will be picked up and used by the media as the basis for a story. ASX releases increasingly serve this purpose also, in addition to their statutory role. Ideally, that story will also reflect how the facts were presented in the release and convey its key underlying messages.
In other words, the information in a media release will be irrelevant unless it is understood and appreciated as “news” by those it is intended to address – the media.

There are so many releases and other pitches cluttering a journalists’ inbox these days that yours has about a nanosecond to make an impact, assuming it is read at all.

If the reader does not understand the news value of the story after the first paragraph (or ideally, the headline), they often won’t read any further.

The rest of the release should set out of the facts clearly and concisely, in a similar order to how the journalist would write the story themselves.

That can be a challenging task for someone inside a company who is closely associated with the events and people that inspired the release, even a professional communications manager. Sometimes a press release drafted internally will end up looking like the product of a committee – never a good idea – as the author tries to accommodate multiple competing views on what is important or attribute the success of the project evenly among executives.

It is often wisest to have a dispassionate, dare one say, disinterested consultant who understands how to talk the media’s language write the first and final drafts of your press release.  If they are good at what they do they will be sensitive to the key messages the company wants to convey but will remain focused on the goal of making “news”.