Tom Forenski’s Die! Press Release! Die! Die! Die!

In this work, Tom Forenski expresses how he thinks that press releases are basically useless.  He thinks they are a waste of time since they usually end up being revised or re-written anyway.  He believes that they have a lot of top-spin and unnecessary quotes.

He proposes that the press release be deconstructed into special sections and tag the information so that publishers can pre-assemble some of the news story and make it useful.  (It should have a brief description of the announcement, a page of quotes from the CEO or other executives, a page of quotes from customers, a page of quotes from analysts, financial information and links inside the press release copy).

Tom feels that there is no reason for journalists to rewrite this stuff and then for production staff to copy-edit and put a bunch of links into the copy.  He says that it is wasted effort because it duplicates work that has already been done.

Others in public relations and journalism agree with Tom and others didn’t.  The ones that disagree don’t understand why he wants public relations practitioners to basically do the journalist’s job from the beginning.

To learn more about Tom’s (and other practitioners’ and journalists’) opinions of press releases visit:  http://www.siliconvalleywatcher.com/mt/archives/2006/02/die_press_relea.php