EDITORIAL

WHERE WENT THE 5 Ws – II

Is The Old Press Release Obsolete?

Is it possible that the old press release – the staple of the public relations practice – is now obsolete? Is it possible that all those articles and books I’ve written, in which I rail against old-fashioned press release writing (see Where Went The 5 Ws? And chapters in several of my books), are now themselves obsolete? That those thousands – literally – of press releases I’ve written over the years are ghosts with no one to haunt? Is it possible that all those great mentors of mine – the Richard Weiners and Bill Ruders -- are going to have to change their acts or go back to the woods? That all those old newspaper guys, who wrote better with a couple of shots for lunch than do all those talking heads who blather on today, are headed to the Smithsonian?

Well, yes.

There sat I in sessions of that excellent trade show for lawyers – Legal Tech – sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers and others, in which leading public relations and marketing practitioners talked of new techniques and emerging relationships between news sources and the press in today’s technical environment. John Hellerman of Levick Strategic Communications; Deborah Brightman Farone, Director of Client and Public Relations; and Jolene M. Overbeck, Director of Business Development of Latham & Watkins all spoke of the new relationships and techniques.

It’s all the fault of the Internet. And other high tech devices.

When the fax machine first became popular, faxing releases to the press without prior permission was a serious taboo. It was considered intrusive, rude, and unjournalistic. That changed, and now, with some exceptions, anything you want to send to the press can go by fax, without prejudice.

As email emerged, it was foolish to assume that anything you sent an editor by email would actually get there. No more. Everybody has email. And the press now agrees that they get a very large portion of input by email. And increasingly, they want it that way, it seems.

But what email has done is to create a new kind of journalism. "Just send the facts, ma’am, and if we’re interested in the story, we’ll call you for the fill-in." Really. That’s what’s happening.

At the turn of the century, reporters – then popularly called legmen, because that’s how they got around to get the news – would send their stories in by wire to rewrite men on the city desk. (Yes, Virginia, rewrite men. No women doing it then.) Or they would phone it in to a rewrite man. Just the facts. The story was filled in by the rewrite men. And it was, back then, just the facts.

That’s where the 5 Ws started – Who, What, When, Where, and Why. The rewrite man did the color. And that’s where the concept of paragraphs in descending order of importance came. If the story had to be cut, it was cut from the bottom. Journalism schools and texts have been teaching this 5 W stuff for generations, as have the public relations teachers. Nobody seems to notice that we don’t have telegraphers any more.

When reporters started writing their own stories, and particularly when word processing came into the city room, the 5W stuff got to be silly (although nobody told the PR people). Lead with the most interesting, important, and salient fact. Fill in the rest later in the story.

But journalism has changed. Nobody has time to read press releases – particularly in the volume that’s become common. Everybody has email. So how does it go?

• More than ever before, you have to know your target on the press. I still get multi releases here from people who don’t seem to have the slightest idea what this publication is about.
• A paragraph is enough to tell the editor what he wants to know. Terse, hard-hitting, relevant to the publication’s readers. If it’s right, you’ll get a call back.
• One thing that hasn’t changed is that you have to write for the reader, not the client. You should see the obtuse technical stuff that comes through here. I’d give chapter and verse, but why embarrass people? I emailed one guy and said, "Tell me in plain English what this is about, and maybe I’ll look at it." He did. I did. Why didn’t he do it in the first place? The Marcus Letter gets hundreds of dollars worth of press material for products that are totally irrelevant to what we’re about. It’s costing clients thousands in wasted money.
• Target individual publications and wire services, don’t buckshot. A good placement with the right editor will often lead to pickup in a lot of different places. Editors, it seems, increasingly check the internet for background on stories, and pick up stuff and ideas from other publications. Didn't happen much, pre-Internet.
• Understand that more than ever, you’re competing for attention against not just other public relations people, but against other reporters who want their stuff in the same space in which you want your stuff. You have to be as professional as they are to compete successfully for space.

And so the old long-winded, tell-it-all-in-one-shot, mass mailed press release is languishing, after almost a hundred years. Gone. Gone the way of the typewriter and the mimeograph machine and the kids stuffing envelopes and the wire. The world belongs to the internet, now.

Except for one thing. Bill Ruder once said, "In the final analysis, public relations is an art form, and no matter what changes, if you’ve still got the art, you’re still in business." As ever, Bill was right.

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