PRESS RELEASE TEMPLATE

LOGO

DATE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact Information

HEADLINE (center)
Subhead (center)

LOCATION – Lead sentence, loaded with all the most pertinent information here
(WWWW).
Then comes the body of the press release, which should be spaced at 1½ or 1.15. This is
written in reverse pyramid style. But, with press releases you can use longer sentences than
you’ve been taught so far. Just not too long. Also, you’ve got to use your persuasion knowledge
here. We must write to persuade someone to think like we do or to do something, so we must
make our information attractive. But please don’t use exclamation points. I hate exclamation
points. Unless they are in a text. Again, with the sentence structure here – use sentences of
varying length to make it easier to read. If you have something that would be better presented in
a list, then:
 You’re welcome to use bullet points in a press release.
 Just format them all the same.
 And make sure your list is appropriate and contains good information.
Then you continue with the information, which can include links if you don’t want to put
them after your hashmarks. Sometimes it will work, sometimes it may not. You’ve got to go
back and proof yourself multiple times, and please have someone else look at your release before
you turn it in to keep from making sloppy mistakes. PLEASE do this. Your grades will be better
because of it. Press releases usually try to stick to one page, but at this point with digital
distribution it doesn’t really matter, but they shouldn’t go more than a page and a half. Make sure
you don’t stop until this reads well and contains all of the information someone would need to
write a story from this. Remember, usually press releases usually don’t get published exactly the
way they’re written unless they’re on the organization website. It’s probably a good idea to use
print formatting when writing your draft, but don’t worry about page numbers. You can then
customize the release for different means of distribution (cutting and pasting into an email, say).
PRESS RELEASE TEMPLATE

Then comes the Boilerplate, which is the “company info” about your organization. This
is a standard paragraph that comes at the end of releases. We’ll look at some in class. Remember
not to leave a sentence hanging at the top of a page without adding a sentence or moving the
paragraph down.
# # # (center, these are hashtags to notify that the press release is finished.)
Website
Social media
Links to photos or other information