PRESS RELEASES FOR DUMMIES. I recall blogging about this during the last presidential cycle, to no apparent effect, so I'd like to again make a brief on behalf of plain English and clarity to all those campaign workers who write press releases. Once upon a time press releases were delivered by hand or by mail. Then it was by fax, and then everything switched over to e-mail. And now reporters get press releases on computers and hand-held devices. Hand-held devices have really small screens. If a press secretary writes a release with the header "Sen./Gov./etc. So-and-so for president campaign announces statement on XYZ," no one can tell from the header what's in the release unless they click through, first, because all that will show up on their hand-held screen is "Sen./Gov./etc. So-and-so for," and second, because the header doesn't say what that candidate said. In a world where newspapers assigned reporters to cover only specific candidates, that was fine. People would still click through and read even the most garbled releases. But we don't live in that world any more.
Today, there is a very large population of people, including most bloggers, who don't cover just one candidate, and who get releases from a dozen or more different campaigns. They do not work for newspapers of record. They will cover candidates when they do or say something interesting or controversial, and ignore them the rest of the time. And they are under no professional obligation to read every last thing that's sent out, because they are not on a specific candidate's beat. Nor will they always call for comment before writing (indeed, the fraction of people who blog who make reporting phone calls before commenting on something is vanishingly small).
It would benefit everyone -- and most especially candidates -- if press secretaries learned to write for this new technological and media environment. For example, if sending out a scheduling update, it is quite helpful to make the first word of the release, "Schedule." "Must Read" and "Breaking" are useful designations if you really want people to read something urgently. If the candidate has said something of interest, "Remarks" or "Statement" also work pretty well. (That's how the White House does it.) So does: "So-and-so Responds to XYZ." A recent DNC release chose a different but also admirably clear approach: "Dean: Bush Administration Still Out of Touch on Iraq." Same with this from the Majority Leader's office: "Reid: We Must Address America's Healthcare Crisis." The message, and the messenger, are all right there in one short line. No one has to click-through to get the message, but they know exactly what's in the release if they want more information. Nor is that an accident -- there's actually an art to writing e-mails with high click-through rates, and Reid and the DNC have hired some of the field's best practitioners.
Hemming and hawing with a long string of formalities in an e-mail header will only obscure a candidate's message. Just compare the Reid example above with this hypothetical: "Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid Announces Statement on Healthcare Crisis." The first header gets the message out, the second is all pointless formalities. There is never any need to repeat the candidate's first name, title, or job goals in headers sent to reporters. Reporters and bloggers know who the candidates are already, and they can tell which campaign is sending them a message just from the name of the press person who is doing the e-mailing. Get to the point. And for God's sakes, don't send out releases headlined, "Press Release." Of course it's a press release. The point of the release is to communicate what new thing the candidate is saying or doing, and the header is the campaign's first shot at getting that done quickly. It's worth taking advantage of that.
That is all.
--Garance Franke-Ruta
