Press Release Writing and Named Journalist Distribution

One page, about 350 words, written in Italian for the Italian press, sent to somewhere between twenty and forty named journalists with the first six subject lines written individually. No wire service, ever. A release is a document that lets a journalist write a short piece without calling you. If it cannot do that, adding distribution only spreads the problem further. What is worth announcing: Something changed that a reader can act on. A new production site with a hiring number and a date. A recall, handled early and plainly. A ruling your firm argued that changes what a category of client should do on Monday. A reformulation that removes an allergen. Funding, if the money buys something a customer will notice. Not a hire nobody outside the company can place, not a rebrand, not an anniversary. I say no to roughly a third of the releases I am asked to write, and that conversation happens before the invoice rather than after the silence. How it is written: The lead sentence carries the change and the date. The second paragraph carries the number and where the number came from. One quote, from someone who will genuinely pick up the phone that week, saying something a person would say out loud. No adjective doing a fact's work. The boilerplate runs to four lines and does not contain the word mission. The fact pack that travels with it: Every figure sourced to a document a journalist can open. Images at 300 dpi with credit lines already cleared. Spokesperson availability inside a stated 48-hour window, with the mobile number of whoever actually answers. For food and drink, any nutrition or health claim checked against the EU register under Regulation 1924/2006 before it leaves my desk. For law firms, the text checked against article 35 of the codice deontologico forense, where comparative and superlative claims are a disciplinary matter rather than a question of taste. For anything involving children, no identifiable image goes to a newsroom without a signed parental release in hand. The send and the embargo: An exclusive first, by name, to the outlet where the story lands hardest, with 24 hours before the rest. Embargoes only where there is a reason — a dataset, a court date, stock arriving on shelf at a set hour — because an embargo without a reason is an invitation to break it. Then the named send, personally, in sequence, not a merge. Afterwards: A note of who opened, who replied, who ran it, and which two lines got quoted. Those two lines are how the next release gets written. I do not report impressions or advertising value equivalence; both are inventions and neither survives contact with a finance director. What I refuse: Wire distribution sold as coverage. Releases built around anchor text for search purposes, which the wires will happily take money for and which no journalist reads. Ghost quotes attributed to executives who will not give interviews. Announcing something that is not true yet. Writing for a client who will not be reachable in the 48 hours after the send. Not for you if: You need to announce this week and the fact pack does not exist. You want the release to carry a message that only makes sense internally. Or the decision to publish is still moving between three stakeholders, in which case buy the time back and come to me once it has stopped moving.