In journalism, news typically comes from three main sources: the hard investigative reporting of journalists, people maiming each other, and press releases. It’s the last that can either be a journalist’s best friend or the bane of their existence.
While newspapers around the country may be cutting column inches, and even entire sections, there are still days when there just aren’t enough shootings, stabbings and enterprise pieces about animal fashion shows to fill the newspaper. However, readers don’t care. News or no news – those pages must be filled come deadline. That’s why journalists like press releases.
Press releases are story pitches sent to journalists regarding everything from the merger of major corporations to Kid Rock’s new line of beer.Coincidentally, the majority of press releases are written by former journalists who either quit their journalism jobs or journalists who were laid off and had to sell their souls to the dark side to pay rent.
Journalists like press releases because they can be rewritten in five minutes and fill annoying white space in the next day’s issue. Sometimes journalists, who are working on 10 stories, two series and a blog, won’t even make a call on the press release before rewriting it.
As much as press releases can save time and effort, they also can draw the ire of journalists. Sometimes a journalist receives a 10-page press release about a new line of soap from some local boutique. Or a press release that does not include any form of contact information. Journalists do not like these type of press releases and will complain about them to anyone in the newsroom who listens for the next week.
Majority of press releases end up in a pile of potential stories or go directly in the waste bin. But occasionally, a journalist will get a press release that is just too good to pass up.
These press releases are usually for events that offer free food. When journalists gets one of these press releases they will
immediately drop everything they are doing, pick up the phone and RSVP to said event.
But as much as journalists like press releases, hardly ever do they yield stories of any substance or win journalists awards.
-30-
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Right on. Luckily I’ve never come across a press release with no contact info, though usually they are emailed to either me or the office – so at the very least I can just hit the reply button.
You forgot to mention the vile press releases that come in an e-mail that says “Press Release Attached” as the subject, then you have to open a Word Document just to know for sure if it needs immediate deletion! Otherwise, spot on!
“Shotty” bars? Dry “pallets”?
Wow, you must have gone to a school that didn’t require much brain power, like you wrote above.
Errors like that are beyond mere typos; they display a person’s ignorance. I didn’t make it past the forst page.
No one has said so yet, but I appreciated this post ending in “-30-”
Gave me a good laugh — as a journalist, of course.