Preparing News Releases

1. The final versions of the stories and articles we read each day are assembled and packaged by journalists. But often the raw mate­rials—the ideas, facts and figures, quotes, and even tables or charts— are prepared by public relations professionals working for their companies or their clients. So the editors of many newspapers depend on PR practitioners, on the other hand it is good for PR people as well, because they make the information public.

2. A usual press release is different from a flyer – it contains more information about what, where, and when happened. A normal press release can be possibly written by a PR practitioner.

3. As any other document it has its standard form, but the problem is that the body or the actual contents of it mustn’t be standard. Above all PR people are interested in attracting attention of the target audience.

4. A press release should contain:

• the "News" banner,

• identification of a contact person with ad­dress and phone number,

• the standard "For Immediate Release" line,

• a sample headline,

• the body of the article,

• and the end sign (#).

5. There are some rules that are to be observed while composing a news release. Special attention should be paid to headlines, leads, quotations use, and sidebars.