How to Write a Press Release Journalists Will Read

The worst press release I ever read opened with "Company X is thrilled to announce the launch of its innovative, cutting-edge platform." No number, no customer, no date. A journalist gave it about four seconds. That is the whole lesson on how to write a press release: put the news in the first sentence, back it with one hard number, and make the rest easy to quote. Here is the format, the template and the mistakes that get a release deleted unread.

What does a press release actually need to do?

One job: make a busy reporter understand your news in under ten seconds and give them enough raw material to write the story without calling you.

That is a low bar and a strict one. A release is not a brand statement and it is not an ad. It is a briefing document. If a journalist can lift your headline, your first paragraph and one quote and have a publishable item, you did it right.

The reason this matters is simple. Reporting on a Taylor Herring survey put the share of releases journalists consider not newsworthy at 90%. The sample was small (30 social news journalists), so treat the exact figure with suspicion. The direction is not controversial. Most releases are noise, and yours has to look like the exception in the first line.

Is your news actually news?

Check this before you write a word. Most founder releases fail here, not in the prose.

Real news, for a journalist, is one of these: money raised, a measurable result, a launch that changes something for a named group of people, a hire or exit that moves a market, original data, or a reaction to something already in the headlines. "We redesigned our website" is none of those. "We now have a new feature" is not either, unless the feature does something a reporter's readers care about.

A quick test. Finish this sentence: "This matters because [specific group] can now [specific thing] when they could not before." If you cannot finish it without adjectives, you do not have a release. You have a blog post. Publish it on your own site and move on.

Skip a release entirely if you only have a small product update, a partnership with no numbers, or an award nobody has heard of. A pitch email to two relevant reporters beats a wire distribution of a non-story every time.

The structure that works: headline, lead, quote, proof, boilerplate

The inverted pyramid is old and it still holds. Newswire's inverted pyramid guide describes it the same way every newsroom does: the most important facts first, supporting detail after, background last. Here is the version I use for early-stage companies.

Headline (under 90 characters). Verb, number, who it affects. "Seed-stage startup cuts invoice disputes 40% for freelancers" works. "Company launches innovative solution" does not. Write it last, after the rest exists.

Lead paragraph (25 to 40 words). Who, what, when, where, why it matters. Everything a reporter needs if they stop reading here, which most do.

Second paragraph. The context: the problem, the size of it, and why now.

One quote, two sentences max. From the founder or a customer. It should say something an actual human would say out loud, with an opinion in it. Not "we are excited". Say what you think is broken.

Proof paragraph. Numbers, customer names you have permission to use, a link to the data. This is the part that makes a reporter trust you.

Boilerplate. Three sentences on what the company does. Then the contact: a real name, a real email, a phone number that picks up.

Total length: 300 to 450 words. One page. Anything longer and you are padding.

Why the first sentence does 80% of the work

Reporters triage. The inbox is a conveyor belt, and the subject line plus first line decide your fate.

Muck Rack and Zeno Group's survey of 500+ journalists found that 53% of US journalists do not use press releases to find story ideas at all. Take that seriously. It does not mean releases are dead. It means the release is a supporting document, and the email wrapping it is the real pitch.

So write the lead as if it were the entire pitch. Compare:

• Weak: "Acme, a leading provider of workflow solutions, today announced a new integration that empowers teams to work smarter."

• Strong: "Acme, a 6-person Austin startup, cut onboarding time for accounting firms from 11 days to 3 with a new Xero integration, according to its first 40 customers."

The second one has a size, a place, a before and after, a source for the claim. A reporter can check it. That is the whole difference.

Which words get a release deleted?

Adjectives you cannot prove. "Leading", "innovative", "revolutionary", "seamless", "robust". Every one of them signals marketing copy, and reporters filter marketing copy by reflex.

Also cut:

• "Thrilled to announce" and "excited to share". Nobody outside your Slack cares how you feel.

• Jargon only your category understands. If your mother cannot follow the first paragraph, neither can a generalist editor.

• Passive voice. "It was announced" tells nobody who did what.

• Exclamation marks, all caps, and "world's first" unless you have a citation for it.

One rule I enforce on every draft: read it aloud. If you would never say a sentence to a journalist at a coffee table, delete it.

A template you can copy today

Paste this, replace every bracket, and delete anything you cannot fill with a specific fact.

Headline: [Company] [verb] [number or outcome] for [who]

Lead: [City, date] [Company], a [size] [category] startup, today [what happened], [one proof point]. [One sentence on why it matters now].

Context: [The problem in one sentence, with a number]. [What people did before]. [What changes].

Quote: "[Opinion, not enthusiasm]," said [Name, title]. "[Second sentence with a specific claim]."

Proof: [Customer or data point]. [Link to full data or demo].

About [Company]: [Three sentences. What it does, for whom, since when.]

Media contact: [Name, email, phone]

Fill it in, then cut ten percent. Seriously. The first draft is always too long.

Where do you send it, and when?

Writing it is half the job. Delivery is where founders waste the work.

Do not blast it to a thousand addresses. Build a list of 15 to 25 reporters who covered something close to your topic in the last 90 days. Read two of their recent pieces. Send each a short email with a one-line reason why this story fits their beat, and paste the release in the body of the email. Attachments get stripped or ignored.

Timing: Tuesday to Thursday, mid-morning in the reporter's time zone. Avoid Friday afternoon and anything near a major news event. If you have an embargo, say so in the subject line and state the exact time.

Follow up once, on day 3, with one new fact. Not "just checking in". We do not have clean data of our own on follow-up lift yet, so I will not invent a percentage. What I can say from experience: the second email gets the reply more often than the first, and the fifth email gets you blocked.

Tools can help with the list and the tracking. Muck Rack and Cision are built for large comms teams and priced that way, with annual contracts in the thousands. For a pre-seed team, the question is whether you need a database at all, or whether an afternoon of manual research does the same job. Honestly, for your first three releases, it does.

How do you handle the quote, the boilerplate and the contact line?

Three small parts, three common failures.

The quote: do not let your lawyer or your marketing lead write it. Founders should say the slightly risky thing. "Most invoice tools are built for accountants, and freelancers pay for it" is quotable. "We are committed to delivering value" is not.

The boilerplate: no superlatives, no history of the founding team's university. Say what you do and who for.

The contact line: a person who answers within an hour. If a reporter writes at 4 pm for a 5 pm deadline and your contact is in a meeting, that story goes to your competitor.

Do you need a wire service, or an agency?

Usually not. Wire distribution puts your release on aggregator sites and into a few databases. It can help with SEO footprints and for regulated announcements. It rarely produces coverage by itself, because journalists do not read the wire for stories. They read their inbox.

An agency at $12K a month will write a release for you. It will also give you a six-month retainer and a deck. For a seed-stage founder with one announcement a quarter, you are paying for a service you could do yourself with three hours and the template above.

If you want a second pair of eyes on wording, a plain editor catches more than people expect. Run the draft through a grammar checker, then give it to someone outside your industry and ask them what the news is. If they cannot say in one sentence, rewrite the lead.

What does a finished release look like in practice?

Take a made-up example so nobody gets blamed. A three-person startup sells scheduling software to dental clinics. It signs its 100th clinic. That is a small milestone, and on its own it is not news.

Add the angle: clinics using it cut no-shows from 18% to 9% over six months. Now there is a result, and a number a trade reporter can use. Headline: "Dental scheduling startup halves clinic no-shows, signs 100th practice." Lead: the 100th clinic, the drop, the period measured, the sample. Quote: the founder on why reminder texts alone were never the fix. Proof: a link to the dataset.

Same company, same week, same milestone. The difference is one number and the discipline to lead with it.

What would I actually do this week?

Pick one announcement that passes the "so what" test. Write the 25-word lead first and keep rewriting it until it contains a number. Build the rest around it in 350 words. Cut anything you cannot prove. Send it to 15 named reporters, not a list of 1,000. Follow up once on day 3.

Then measure it: how many opened, how many replied, how many published. Write those numbers down. In three releases you will know more about what works for your category than any agency deck will tell you.

Fire the agency. Write the lead.