The Evolution of the Press Release
Mark Twain once said the rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated. The same may be said for the press release. It's not dead—but its mission has evolved.
Those PR practitioners who are spreading these death rumors would have you believe that press releases should be neither written nor distributed. I take issue with this old-school thinking.
Now, inundating the media with press releases has not been a good practice since shortly after Edward Bernays opened the first PR firm in 1919. Any competent PR person has known for years that garnering media coverage almost never happens directly due to a press release. However, that is fodder for another article.
Let's talk about the evolution of the press release into a solid tool for helping organizations deliver key messages to multiple audiences in the digital age.
In the not-so-distant pre-Internet past, press releases were aimed solely at trade and consumer media outlets. The media acted as the gatekeepers, taking your information and making decisions about how, or whether, to use it. Organizations today are able to bypass the media filter in a number of ways, thanks to the Net.
Consider this: both journalists and consumers use the Web for research. More than 550 million searches are done daily via the Web. And, every month, US Web users conduct 27 million searches at Yahoo News, Google News or other news search engines. Also, according to recent surveys by Middleberg/Ross and the Pew Internet Project:
- 98% of journalists go online daily.
- 92% do it for article research.
- 76% to find new sources and experts.
- 73% to find press releases.
- 68 million Americans go online daily.
- 30% use a search engine to find information.
- 27% go online to get news.
→ end article preview
Read the Full Article
Harry Hoover is managing principal of Hoover ink PR (www.hoover-ink.com). Reach him at harry@hoover-ink.com.
