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● Introduction & Index ● What is PR ● Job Expectations ● Types of Media ● Building Relationships ● Media, Hams & FCC Rules ● The Basic News Release ● Interviews and Live ● Making your own show ● Easy P.R. ● Public Service Events ● Piggy-back to Events ● Pictures NOW! ● P.R. Research Aids ● Making Friends ● ARES® PIO ● Final Exam Information |
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When Do I Write a News Release? This is one of the most common questions coming from new PIOs and the simple answer is: ALWAYS. It may sound too simple, but there is usually something going on every month in an active club, so finding something to write about just requires a little engagement on your part. If you look back a few paragraphs, you will see a lot of common activities in the section on who and what. Generally a news release will be about something that is going to happen, not reporting on something that has happened-although that type of release is certainly in play in certain situations. This means you need to be ready ten days to a month in advance of the event. Any more than a month and you will be forgotten, less than ten days will tend to make you look unprepared and might make the paper feel rushed. How Do I Write a News Release? Any type of writing requires a “skeleton” or some type of structure. A successful news release truly needs to be structured. Having said that, not every release will follow the exact same structure, but as you gain experience, you will learn to tailor your releases to the style that best fits the event. Heading First and foremost, you must create a simple heading, to set it apart from all the other documents a newsroom receives on a daily basis. Putting the words “NEWS RELEASE” in the upper left corner is the most common heading. Notice it is in all capital letters? Resist the temptation to make it all capitals, bold, underlined and larger type size. Newsrooms are used to getting releases from any number of organizations formatted just this way. Next, you need to enter contact information: Name, title, phone number(s), e-mail address. At this point, there is really no need to list your call sign, since most reporters would not understand their significance any more than the initials following a doctor’s name signifying his professional associations. Your sample header should look something like this:
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