With the discussion about the hRelease or the New Media Release as some people call it, it has made me sit back and think about the media releases that we send out on a regular basis. (If you haven’t seen the PDF of a proposed template for the hRelease, it’s here.)

If we are going to change the press release, let’s look at who our audiences are. Remember, we are not writing a release for our health or for the sake our our client, THE MEDIA is our audience for a media release. Of course, every publication, station, outlet, site, etc. is different. For the sake of argument, I’m going to try to group some media into large groups so we can decide what these groups need and how we as the public relations professionals are going to meet the needs of our audience.

Remember, I work at an ad agency so we typically generalize when looking at target markets. I know that every reporter is different…

Young, Hip, National Reporters: Not only do they live in the information age, they are a big part of what’s driving it. I’m not going to go deeper, because, they are the group that the hRelease is really targeted at.

Old School National Reporters: This segment throws away more media releases a day than most of us see in a lifetime. He / she will not be printing / broadcasting what we write verbatim unless it’s a quote. They look at press releases to find stories that they can expand on and create something new. He or she is an expert in the trade and is the holy grail for PR people. He / she uses a computer, but is more comfortable on the phone or on the street with a notepad.

Are they ready for the hRelease? I think that they want some aspects of the hRelease but have no use for the RSS feeds, Technorati tags or a del.icio.us page.

Small Town Reporters: Sure some of them want to write their own stories, but they have too much work to do in a small amount of time. It’s not unusual for them to take a media release “as is” and print it.

Are they ready for the hRelease? They look for a pitch – not a release – to choose their stories. Sure an hRelease is helpful for them, but only once they are working on the story. They need a “traditional” release on a day-to-day basis because frankly, they don’t have the staff to write all of the news.

Online “Reporters”: One of the big selling points for the wire services a few years back was that your story was definitely going to be on Yahoo, Google, etc. Your clients loved it too – getting a link to their story on a national Web site.

Are they ready for the hRelease? Nope. Stories on these sites are for reading by the consumer. If it’s not in narrative form, it doesn’t make sense.

So what are you suggesting, John? I am in complete favor of changing the media release. Just as the hRelease, it doesn’t meet everyone’s needs either. I think that we need to explore a hybrid of the best of the traditional and the hRelease. In the mean time, we can use both, but let’s give each audience the kind of release the they need to do the job.

Leave a Comment