What writers & others say about PR writing
“Press releases are a billion-dollar industry that creates 99% waste.”
— Josh Bernoff, author, Writing Without Bullshit
Press releases “offer no context, no understanding of the receiver, and no story. They are literally the laziest thing a company can do.”
— John Biggs, east coast editor, Tech Crunch
“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.”
— Daniel J. Boorstin, American social historian and educator
“Publicity is absolutely critical. A good PR story is infinitely more effective than a front page ad.”
– Richard Branson, British business magnate and founder of the Virgin Group
“Doctors lose their licenses. Drunk drivers get cited in the local papers. Speeders get tickets. Wild pitchers get pulled from the baseball game. Pedophiles must post signs warning the public of their past crimes. Why shouldn’t grossly careless or incompetent PR people be lined up, exposed, and punished, too?”
— Brenda Clevenger, ABC, co-founder of CornerBarPR
“Frankly, I consider ‘PR quality’ an oxymoron.”
— Christa Degnan of PC Week, in a Softletter survey of media about the quality of PR writing
“I get calls from PR groups who can’t even pronounce the company name much less discuss the technology.”
— Alexis dePlanque, META Group
“If I only had two dollars left I would spend one dollar on PR.”
— Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft
“Public relations specialists make flower arrangements of the facts, placing them so the wilted and less attractive petals are hidden by sturdy blooms.”
– Alan Harrington, novelist
“I receive dozens of pitches every week on new gadgets, websites and web services. Each reads pretty much the same way. The e-mail starts with ‘Hi Amber, I hope this finds you well’ followed by four or five paragraphs that are copied and pasted from a traditional press release. These all end up in my trash.”
— Amber MacArthur, technology reporter
“The question I always ask executives is: ‘If someone calls you on the phone, how long do you give them to tell you what they want?’ Usually the answer is, ‘Less than a minute.’ Then why do these execs think someone would give them more than a minute of their time, wading through a press release? Grab the audience’s attention, spur them to action, then let them go. Put the fluff into a long version of the release you hang on your website, if you have to.”
— Mike Pierson, chief, Community Outreach at Air Force Space Command
“Every once in a while I’ll sit down with a jug of Jack Daniels and a bottle of Advil and dig through old press releases to see if PR agencies have learned how to write.”
— Mark Ragan, president, Ragan Communications
“Bad writing among PR agencies is the one thing in this world we can count on. Ice caps may melt. Sunnis and Shia may one day make peace. But PR agencies will continue to bill their hapless clients for thousands of press releases that no one on the planet could possibly comprehend.”
— Mark Ragan, president, Ragan Communications
“PR writing is so horribly consistent — or consistently horrible — that agencies even have a template for it.”
— Mark Ragan, president, Ragan Communications
“None of the kids hired by the agencies and billed out at $150 an hour have the slightest idea what they’re writing about. They don’t understand the product or the client. They have no background in the industry, and they never learned how to write in college.”
— Mark Ragan, president, Ragan Communications
“The broad thoughtlessness of many press releases is sort of astonishing. The classic of the genre is putting ‘Timely Business Story’ in the headline. But there are also releases that seem tailored to speak to everybody and appeal to nobody.”
— Derek Thompson, staff writer, The Atlantic
“Please think about the journalist you are reaching. S/he is reading 100 PR pitches a day. All of them are bad. Not most. Not almost all. All of them. That is the overwhelming rule of PR pitches. They are all bad. Because they are not useful.”
— Derek Thompson, staff writer, The Atlantic
“No agency or their clients will be impressed with how savvy you are to the marketplace if you can’t express those thoughts in an easily understood and acceptable way. Get the writing skills down first.”
— Ronn Torossian, CEO, 5W Public Relations
“One of the top two abilities lacking in entry-level PR pros: strong writing skills.”
— WorkInPR survey
“Only two things will survive global warming: cockroaches and boilerplates.”
— Ann Wylie, writing coach
How can you get your story picked up?
PR professionals have been married to the traditional news release format since Ivy Lee created the release more than 100 years ago. Why, then, do we need a new approach?
With 2,500 releases going out each day — that’s one every 35 seconds — the impact of your traditional news release ain’t what it used to be. In fact, fewer than 50% of all traditional news releases ever get covered, according to PR Newswire’s own research.
Learn to put your PR pieces among the 50% that actually get the word out at NOT Your Father’s PR Writing — our PR-writing workshop.
There, you’ll learn current best PR-writing practices. And you’ll improve your writing with personal feedback and coaching from the Public Relations Society of America’s “national writing coach.”
