...and help us improve our news service
KCI Publishing's News Editor James Chater reflects on recent developments in the world of news gathering and processing and offers a few tips on how to write good press releases.
A lot has changed since I was appointed News Editor of KCI Publishing in 2000, both within our company and in the world outside. The news service we provide on our websites and in our magazines has expanded, and the reliance of the business world on websites and e-mail has also greatly increased. The result is a huge daily volume of e-mail traffic – augmented, unfortunately, by a marked increase in spam and virus reports.
The problem I have in separating the electronic wheat from the chaff is one I share with all my colleagues and business partners. An ever-increasing portion of each day's work is spent deleting unwanted e-mail. This is a frustrating distraction from my real work, especially since I try to keep the delay between receiving the news and publishing it as short as possible.
In view of the constraints on our time and the fact that e-mail and the Internet are mixed blessings, I thought I would share some tips on how media professionals can help me to disseminate the news as quickly, efficiently and as accurately as possible. I will start by considering content, then add a few thoughts about reporting in the electronic age. My thanks to the vast majority of my media colleagues who regularly supply me with news that is professionally written and in a convenient format. My comments below are as much inspired by their good example as by the shortcomings I have experienced elsewhere.
First, an important general point: the news we place on our website and in our magazines is placed free of charge to the person or company who sends us the news. It should therefore be genuine news, and not primarily promotional in character. It should describe an event, and not simply be an essay in self-congratulation. Examples of events might include: a new product (say, less than four months old) or a new application; an upcoming project; a significant order; a prize; an appointment; a merger or acquisition; an application story; or a failure report. Naturally, any news item may be seen as at least partly promotional in nature or purpose, but there is an obvious distinction to be made between what is primarily promotional and what is primarily factual. Readers wishing above all to promote their products would do better to contact our advertising department.
Here are a few of my favourite "do's" and "don'ts" (examples are based on actual press releases received or spotted on the Internet, but with names and other details changed):
Do come straight to the point: initial sentences should be short and simple, and summarise what follows. Unfortunately some press releases start with a general axiom (such as the need to reduce costs, or protect employee safety) before proceeding to describe the event in the question. This is too slow – or at least, in the Anglo-Saxon business culture it is considered so. Press releases are designed to be read quickly by busy people. So far as possible, the more important elements in the press release should be located early on, the less important ones further down. A bad first sentence: "The XZY Group, through its wholly owned subsidiary ZXY Minerals Limited and its partners ABC Petrol and DEF Petroleum, has been notified by the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources of Iran that the group has been selected to negotiate the terms of a Production Sharing Contract to develop the GHI Gas fields in central Iran." Better: "The XZY Group has been selected by Iran's Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Resources to negotiate a production-sharing contract to develop the GHI gas fields in central Iran." [Other essential information can come later.]
Write as simply as possible, avoiding verbose padding: use "use", not "utilise"; write "worth more than", not "valued in excess of". Avoid clumsy adjectival or noun conglomerations: "XYZ, the Paris, Texas based petrochemical company…" – write "XYZ, a petrochemical company based in Paris, Texas, USA…"; "pump refurbishment program"– what's wrong simply with "pump refurbishment"?
Avoid clichés like "state-of-the-art", "high-quality", "leading" and "cutting edge" (unless you are referring to stainless-steel knives, that is). These are over-worked and are invariably excised.
Press releases should be complete in themselves: all essential information should be contained in the body of the text, not just in the title. This avoids the danger that, if a heading is replaced or shortened for layout reasons, vital information is lost. Incredibly, I often read product descriptions in which the writer has failed to mention the name of the relevant company, not only in the body of the text but also in the heading!
Avoid parochialisms. In the phrase "the Hereford-based ABC Pump Co.", not everyone is going to guess that Hereford is a county in the UK. When talking about "the Government", state which country you are referring to. Remember that once press releases get onto the web, they are read by a world-wide audience.
Avoid mixing persons or numbers. In particular, the third person plural is useless once the press release passes the office or factory gate. Wrong: "XYZ Welding Company Inc., Walden, New York, has announced our Type ABC remote-control TIG welding machine." Correct: "XYZ Welding Company Inc. (Walden, New York) has introduced its Type ABC remote-control TIG welding machine." A common mistake: "ABC Engineering has signed a contract to supply equipment to the XYZ Northern oilfield. Their scope of work includes…"
Avoid over-use of capitals: do you remember those old Agatha Christie crime mysteries, in which highly significant clues or observations were highlighted by prolonged use of italics? All rather stagy and overdone, like Hercule Poirot twirling his mustachios, or Maigret lighting his pipe. Well, some writers use capitals in a similar way, to emphasise important names of companies or products. HOWEVER, I don't know about you, but when I read a lot of capitals I get the DISTINCT IMPRESSION that I'm being SHOUTED AT, which can be RATHER TIRING – as well as typographically ugly. The device is not accepted in most quality journals.
With regard to frequency of press releases: little and often is better than nothing for months then all at once (the Tomato Ketchup syndrome: "Shake and shake the Ketchup bottle, / None will come, and then a lot'll"). Companies that unleash their press releases in one go and then fall silent for months run the risk that only one press release per batch will be published, the rest being consigned to the wastepaper bin.
Here are a few observations about media services in the electronic age:
Increasingly, we at KCI tend to ignore or delay processing press releases that arrive by fax or post rather than by e-mail. Nowadays, typing out a press release again is simply not an option. If you must use fax or the post, please include all contact details, including an e-mail address. Inexplicably, I am still receiving press releases in the post that include a name and phone number but no e-mail address. As regards faxes, please remember it is our paper being used to print the faxes, and that, here in this very green part of the Netherlands, we love trees!
E-mails containing press releases should state the subject of the press release in the subject heading. Wrong subject heading: "Press release from KMN Company"; right: "KLMN signs contract with the Oliver Oil Company".
E-mails should contain the name, address, phone number and e-mail address of a contact person. Put this information in the body of the release (or in the e-mail), not in a letterhead or picture file (we cannot extract the text from there).
Concerning file format: I am always surprised by the number of contacts sending us PDF files. PDF files are useful when appearance and layout are important, such as page proofs or consumer magazines. If, however, the contents need further processing, send Word documents or RTF documents, or paste the contents into the e-mail itself. Please do not use any other text processing software – we may not be able to read it. Every current text processor can export to rtf-format documents.
Think carefully about the size of any e-mails you send. As a general guideline, I find anything over 1MB hard to handle, over 3 MB next to impossible, over 5 MB absolutely impossible.
Keep your virus scanner up-to-date. Take care when sending zip files – these can contain infected files. Never send self-extracting files – these are automatically deleted.
Photos should always be jpg or tiff files, with a resolution of 300 dpi. Photos embedded in e-mails, Word files, HTML files or PDF files are useless. An acceptable alternative is to enclose a link to a website containing a high-resolution photo.
Most of the above is commonsense. If you are in doubt, just think about the worst thing you could possibly do, and do the opposite. As a colleague wrote to me recently: "As you can imagine, the worst possible release you can send would be a hot link to your web site where we find a PDF of a Word document containing embedded photos, all packed up in a 10 Megabyte Zip file."
The following observations apply to websites:
Nowadays, no company that is going places can afford to treat its website as an optional add-on. It should be the engine that drives the process of information dissemination, not the rear carriage. The point is worth making, as I am still getting paper copies of press releases that state that an electronic copy can be found on the company's website; I go to the website, and the press release is not there. In these companies, the digital right hand does not know what the analogue left hand is doing.
Date your website news. Press releases should always carry dates, especially in the case of new products, or when words like "today", "this week" etc. are used. Many are the times I have visited a website to look for news, only to find that it is undated. Not wishing to risk publishing old news everyone has heard before, I reluctantly pass over it. I also tend to avoid press releases described as "new" – usually inside a snappy yellow ticker: how new is "new"?
Company address and other contact details should be clearly displayed on an easy-to-find page. The corporate headquarters, not just the regional branches, should be easily and quickly identifiable. An e-mail form by itself will not do. The information should be presented in a form that can easily be copied to another format, i.e. it should be text, not image. Sometimes the search for contact information has proved so frustrating that I have resorted to e-mailing this poem to offending companies:
LOCATION!
Your fine website I've just espied,
But one thing leaves me mystified:
Why proffer so much information
If you won't tell us your firm's location?
After so much sweat and graft
Don't you think it's rather daft?
In vain this past hour
Your site I had to scour.
E-mail addresses, it's true, abound,
But the physical sort cannot be found.
Now, I'd love to meet you face to face,
But I'll need your data in meat space.
The time has come when you should heed
The realtors' oft-stated creed
(Who knows? It could prove your salvation):
"
What counts is LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION!"
Thank you for heeding the advice in the above article. Electronic media have produced gains in speed and convenience for all of us in the media and publishing business, but if we are truly to enjoy the benefits of these recently developed tools, we need to use them with sensitivity and discretion.
As always, I look forward to receiving your press releases (which ideally should be 150–200 words). Please make a note of the following e-mail addresses (opened daily):