The structure reporters actually scan, the first sentence that decides everything, and the habits that get releases deleted. With a worked template you can use today.
Most press releases are written for the company's lawyers, the CEO's ego, and the wire service's word count. None of those people are the reader. The reader is a reporter skimming on a phone, deciding in about four seconds whether this is a story. Write for that person and the release works. Write for anyone else and it is a formality.
A release does three jobs. It puts the facts on the record in your words. It gives a reporter everything needed to write a story without calling you. And it becomes the canonical version anyone searching later will find. It does not, on its own, get coverage. The pitch does that. The release is what you attach.
That distinction matters because it tells you what to optimize. Not persuasion. Clarity, completeness, and speed of comprehension.
The single most common failure: a headline that starts with the company name. "Acme Announces Launch of Next-Generation Platform" tells the reporter nothing about why anyone would care. Flip it. Lead with the change in the world, then say who caused it.
Weak: Acme Announces Series B Funding Round. Better: Acme Raises $40M to Bring Same-Day Settlement to Small-Business Payroll.
The second version has a number, a use of funds, and a beneficiary. A reporter can decide in one line whether it belongs on their beat. Keep it under about twelve words. No adjectives. If you cannot write it without "leading," "innovative," or "revolutionary," you do not yet know what the story is.
The lead sentence carries the who, what, and why-it-matters, in that order of importance to the reader, not to you. Assume nothing after it gets read.
A test that works: if the reporter copied only your first sentence into their article, would it be accurate, complete, and interesting? If not, rewrite it until it would be.
Reporters read releases in a fixed pattern, and the format should match it.
Total length: one page. Three hundred to five hundred words. Anything longer is a signal you have not decided what the news is.
Almost every press release quote is unusable, which is why they almost never get quoted. "We are thrilled to announce this exciting milestone in our journey" is not a sentence anyone has ever spoken aloud.
A usable quote does one of three things. It explains the reasoning behind the decision. It makes a claim about what happens next. Or it says the uncomfortable true thing the rest of the release is too polite to say. Write it the way the person actually talks, read it out loud, and cut anything you would be embarrassed to hear in an interview.
One good quote beats three bad ones. Reporters will lift it verbatim if it sounds like a person.
Paid wire services put your release in front of thousands of outlets, almost none of which will write about it, and produce a wall of automated reprints that look like coverage and are not. They are useful for one thing: disclosure obligations, particularly for public companies. For everyone else, the release lives on your own newsroom page and travels as an attachment to a targeted pitch.
If you do use a wire, do it for the record, not for the reach.
Headline: [Outcome or change] as [Company] [does what] Subhead: [Second key fact or the beneficiary and the scale]
[CITY], [Month Day, Year]. [Company], [three-word description], today [verb: launched, raised, signed, released] [the thing], which [what it changes for whom].
[Specific proof: the number, the customers, the date it is available, the terms.]
"[One sentence a human would say about why, or what happens next]," said [Name], [Title] at [Company].
[Why now: the market condition or customer problem in two sentences.]
"[Outside voice, optional]," said [Name], [Title] at [Customer or Partner].
About [Company]: [Three sentences, factual.]
Contact: [Name], [email], [phone]
A press release is the least important document in a launch and the one companies spend the most time on. Get the headline and the first sentence right, put one real quote in it, keep it to a page, and spend the time you saved on the pitch and the reporter list. That is where coverage actually comes from. It is also most of what media relations is when it is done well.
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