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Thursday, March 28, 2024

Gatekeepers and PR practitioners

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Media channels—broadcast and print, largely—often get press releases from companies with letterheads or those commissioned and written by public relations practitioners.

Such releases—perhaps a company wants to announce it has a new product on the line or a political stalwart wants his or her quotes in sound bytes or carried in long paragraphs in print—can be subject to the mercy of an outside party, properly the gatekeeper of any newsroom.

But while some PR practitioners have been in this game for years, decades even, the newsroom can still pick up some lessons from them and the press releases they send that may be shared with aspiring journalists and upcoming public relations experts.

Technological advances notwithstanding, some experts in press-release handling suggest that the good, old-fashioned press release is still a staple in the PR practitioner’s victuals.

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PR practitioners and writers of press releases, whether they are from the corporate communications department or its equivalent, must remember certain basics to have the sound bite or the press release in print.

Sounds easy? Not quite.

1. Make sure that you have the correct name of your addressee and the title held in the newsroom, otherwise your masterpiece can be a candidate for the old school journalism editor’s spike—a waste of your time including the possibility of losing the respect of your newsroom “contact.”

2. Do not write long press releases —a two-page single space material is already very long—since the editor has other materials on his or her plate while rushing to beat the deadline. An 800-1,000-word press release should be sufficient.

3. Remember that you are writing for a particular audience. In which case, the writing style can be adjusted or re-angled as necessary—like a press release for a target audience of culinary enthusiasts which should be different when writing one for those in the trucking industry.

4. You should not use slang that your group, and your group alone, can understand, the lingo that may not be a popular jargon, and the use of unpopular acronyms which may make the editor, the gatekeeper, irritated beyond his kindest self.

In other words, be professional and grammatically proper at all times.

5. Don’t try to impress your addressee with long paragraphs that might invite for him a cardiologist in the middle of your paragraph. Keep your press release tight and concise, and don’t try to bombard your addressee with unnecessary dust.

6. Do not forget to include contact details in your releases since the editor, even if the editor is a friend, may want to ask some questions. There are of course impeccably written PR materials that go straight to the proofreader’s lap.

7. Don’t try to impress your addressee with a good headline which you think might be used. The honest-to-goodness print editors have their own decks and page schedule to follow while the broadcast editors are more interested in the sound bites.

8. Double check your press release before you send them by whatever means. And if you are sending the same by email, don’t put all the names in the TO box with the names of all your contacts. You would be insulting your addressee who might have the thought that you are sending the same material to x number of persons. Make your addressee feel special. In other words, hide the recipients list.

9. When using email, don’t send attachments unless you are so required. Many editors fear attachments carry viruses. Cut and paste from the Word document or other file into the body of the email, using, of course, the same font.

Experts say if it is something graphically intensive, then you must put it on a website and provide a link.

10. When using quotes, don’t make them like they have the distance between Basco and Bongao. Remove the verbal deadwood and the excess periphrasis.

11. Don’t antagonize your addressee and then follow through if he or she has received your email or press release with your letterhead.

12. You must format in plain text. A company logo or other graphics in the email body—including names of all the officers at times on the left side, which space in fact is very unnecessary—can make the email or even the PR sent through a special messenger pretty unwieldy.

13. The bottom line is that PR experts who break email etiquette rules or plain hard mail etiquette may be discerned as unprofessional and/or lazy. Conversely, those who follow the rules in form have greater chances to secure print space or broadcast airtime and maintain a long-lasting professional respect.

14. There are, of course, PR practitioners who blend press releases with envelopes shoved straight into the drawers of their respective addressees —as though none has naughty eyes.

A note of caution here: Not all addressees have forgiving capacity for such PR cheekiness.

These are by no means the only boulevard lanes to have a press release aired or printed. Like a news story, perhaps these will constitute for print the lead paragraph. Or for broadcast the important lead-in.

 

HBC, an academic and practitioner, is author of journalism textbooks including The Active Newsroom (National Bookstore, 1985), The 6th W (Armiandy Publishers, 1974), and Reporting for Different Times Zones (Armiandy Publishers, 1978).

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