Why the press release has a bad reputation
Ask most journalists what they think of press releases and the response will be some version of: they are the thing I delete before I read them. PR people writing to announce something the company cares about, formatted to look like news, distributed to a list of reporters who did not ask for it, and hoping that one of them will find it worth writing about. The hit rate is low. The frustration on both sides is real.
But the format itself is not the problem. The problem is how it is deployed: too broadly, for the wrong kind of content, to journalists who have no connection to the subject matter. A press release sent to the right journalist about the right piece of news, written in the right way, still works. The format has not changed. The way organisations use it has deteriorated.
What a press release is actually for
A press release is a structured way to communicate factual information about a specific development to a journalist, in a format they can use efficiently. Its value is not in persuasion; it is in efficiency. A well-written press release gives a journalist the key facts, quotes, and context they need to write about the story without having to research it from scratch. If the story is genuinely newsworthy and the press release is genuinely well-written, it makes a journalist's job easier.
That is the only situation in which a press release earns its keep. If the development is not genuinely newsworthy to the journalist's audience, no amount of formatting will make it so. The press release is a vehicle for a story; it is not the story itself.
What counts as genuinely newsworthy
The test for genuine newsworthiness is not whether the development matters to the company. It is whether it matters to the journalist's readers. Readers of a business publication care about things that change how businesses operate: significant funding rounds, major executive appointments at well-known companies, genuine research findings, product launches that meaningfully change what is possible in a category, and events or decisions that reveal something about market direction.
They do not care, in the way the company hopes they do, about minor product updates, award wins from pay-to-enter schemes, or partnership announcements between two companies neither of them has heard of. These things may warrant internal communications. They do not warrant press releases sent to the trade media.
If the story would not be interesting to a journalist's readers without the company's involvement, it is not a press release story. It is a content marketing story, and it belongs on the company blog.
The structure that actually works
A press release that a journalist can use has a specific structure. The headline is a news statement, not a marketing claim. "Sprinta research finds 68% of mid-market marketing teams plan to cut agency spend in 2025" is a headline. "Sprinta Launches Revolutionary New Marketing Solution" is not. The first describes something that happened. The second describes a company's self-assessment of its own product.
The opening paragraph contains the full story: who, what, when, where, why. A journalist who reads only the first paragraph should understand the complete news. Everything that follows in the press release is supporting detail that a journalist can use selectively depending on what angle they take.
Quotes should be genuine and specific. "We are excited to announce this partnership which will create significant value for our customers" is a placeholder for an actual quote. A quote that says something specific about the significance of the development, in language a real person would actually use, is worth including. A corporate non-quote is better cut.
Targeting changes everything
The same press release sent to 500 journalists will produce lower total coverage than the same press release sent to 20 well-chosen journalists. The 20 are the journalists who cover this type of story, who have written about this topic recently, and whose audience is genuinely likely to be interested. The 480 who are not a fit will delete the email and are slightly less likely to open the next one from the same sender.
Precision targeting requires research and takes more time per release. It produces substantially better results, both in coverage rate and in the quality and relevance of the coverage generated.
When not to use a press release
A press release is the wrong format when the story requires a personal pitch, when you are offering an exclusive, when the development is complex enough to need context before the headline makes sense, or when the relationship with the journalist is established enough that a personal note is more appropriate. In these cases, a direct email pitch, written specifically for that journalist, will outperform the press release format every time.
The press release is also the wrong format for stories that are not genuinely newsworthy, regardless of how important they are to the business. A significant product milestone worth celebrating internally does not become media-worthy because it was formatted correctly. Recognising this honestly, and directing that story to the company blog or social channels where it can be told on its own terms, is a better decision than a press release that will be ignored.
A format worth keeping in the toolkit
The press release is neither obsolete nor universally effective. It is a specific tool for a specific situation: communicating genuine news to journalists who cover that type of news, in a format they can use efficiently. Used that way, it remains one of the most practical formats in a PR professional's toolkit. Used as a default format for everything the company wants to communicate, it is one of the least effective.