The New Press Release ?

Monday

29May2006

Monday, May 29, 2006 at 15:47

Shift Communications proposed a new format for the good old press release. It includes several "new media" twists and should be more "social" according to the PR Agency.

The template (opens a pdf) they propose includes bullet point formatted news facts, links, RSS feed(s), a del.icio.us page, Technorati and digg this tags, multimedia links etc... Looks good, makes sense to PR bloggers like myself but I have some thoughts on this format...

Although this is what a press release should look like (and do) in my mind, I am very doubtful that most PR people will be able to use the template before studying "new PR" first.

What is even more important is that most reporters, at least here in Europe, would have it difficult to understand the usage of tags and RSS feeds I think...

Sure the major IT related publications and newspapers have now RSS feeds on their websites - also here in Belgium - but I am not convinced that most reporters know the benefits of social media yet.

What do you think, will this work ? (I know some reporters in Belgium are reading my blog, please give your feedback.)

Via Shel Holtz.

Technorati : PR, journalism, media+relations, new+pr, press+release, press+release+template, rss, shel+holtz, shift+communications

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Reader Comments (3)

Hi Philippe. Seem like this template still leaves a lot of work up to the journalist. I am not saying journalists, are lazy (quite au contraire), but in a profession where deadlines are sharp and workload is often high, I am not sure this press release "kit" will motiv

May 30, 2006 |

Serge Cornelus

Okay: here's what was left of my comment before I accidentally pushed the wrong button :-). I was going to say I am not sure wether journalists have the time or the willingness to put all these elements together into a story of their own. There will probably be journalist who will, and if the news is really big, I am even sure of it. But minor news releases will, in my view, still require a more 'finished product' type of release that allows the editorial staff to pick up the news without wasting too much time on it. The links are, however, an excellent tool for background info and extra. Of that I am convinced. The question for PR people, however, will be if the eventual output (amount of coverage) will be worth the effort of putting this all together? And that I will have to see. If a company has really big news, I guess they will want to do more than just send out a press release, however integrated it is...

May 30, 2006 |

Serge Cornelus

Hi Serge,

Thanks for your comment. You are right, I was also thinking that this format will require reporters to really dig out the story.

On the other hand, it will differentiate the "real" news stories from the "here's another press release" type of communications.

But my main concern is still that this is maybe a bit too modern for the moment. We still need to get the basics on RSS etc... right here in Belgium/Europe. And with "we" I mean both PR people and reporters.

May 30, 2006 |

Philippe Borremans

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