Print Publicity 101

Print publicity is the cheapest form of advertising open to any company.

It’s free—if you know how. But first, you’ve got to learn how the print media operates. You’ve also got to remember that the working press is a corps of intelligent and decent professionals battling against time every day of every year.

The men and women who work in daily newspapers labor under the intense pressure of immutable deadlines. Editorial offices are a madhouse in the late afternoon. That’s deadline time for stories.

Phones ring non-stop. Everyone seems hunched over his or her keyboard madly typing away. A perspiring few stare blankly into space awaiting divine inspiration.

Your company’s press release arrives into this bedlam. If it’s on paper and is addressed to a specific editor, your release goes to that editor’s inbox pile. And it stays there until the editor gets to it.

You also have to fall in line if you email the release. Editors are deluged with emailed press releases. Now what?

Where your press release goes from here depends on how you “prepared” your release for publication. By “prepared” I mean going through a process that gives your release a better than even chance of getting published. Here’s that process in a nutshell.

1. Make your release easy to read so the editor won’t have to waste his time re-writing it. Writing a press release is never easy. If you didn’t take journalism, or if you had news writing but never took it seriously, you’re in deep shit this early. Better find someone who knows how to write news.

But if you do know how to write, you’re best served by using the five “Ws” (Who, What, When, Where, Why) and the “inverted pyramid” format (the most important news in the first three to five paragraphs; the rest of the story is background).

Keep the language simple but pack the story with information and quotes from a company boss, if possible. But make sure the most important info goes into the first three to five paragraphs.

That will make it easier for the editor to edit your story (without taking out the “meat” of your story) in case he runs out of layout space. Also, do create an appropriate title for your story.

Paragraph and make your paragraphs short. As a guide, make each paragraph consist of three short sentences. That’s the equivalent of about one printed inch in a newspaper.

Editors who can’t understand your press release, or who know they’ll have to spend a lot of their limited time re-writing it, will normally set the release aside.

A few matters of form: prefer Times Roman 12 points with 1.5 inch spacing when typing hard copy on MSWord. Also include your name and contact info (telephone, email) to establish your credibility. Proofread your story for mistakes.

Remove “honorifics” such as Mr., Mrs. and Ms but retain professional titles (Dr., Atty.). Refer to your company in the third person (not “our company” or “my company”).

2. Address your press release to a specific editor. You must never send out a press release addressed “The Editor.”

A broadsheet has a lot of editors. Sending it to that nebulous entity, “The Editor,” is the best way for your release to get lost in the newsroom forever.

Before you even write the release, however, call up the editorial department of the newspaper or newspapers you intend to send the release to. Identify yourself and your company and say you’re writing such and such a press release and whom should I send it to?

Jot down the editor’s name and his position. Ask if you should send the release by email or hard copy. Many broadsheets prefer email (it eliminates re-typing) while a few prefer hard copy.

Address the release to that specific editor in the subject line of your email along with the title of your press release and your company name. In the hard copy, legibly write down the editor’s name on the upper right hand part of the first page.

3. Do follow up your press release. This is probably the single most important factor in getting your release published if you’re unknown to the editor. “Huwag kang mahiya.”

Call the next afternoon, identify yourself and politely ask the editor if he got your press release. If he says he did, ask politely if he’ll use it. If he says he didn’t get the release, ask if you could re-send it and how you should send it. Follow up but don’t be “makulit” by phoning the editor everyday.

4. Re-issue the press release to the same editor if the release hasn’t been published after a week. Re-write the press release to make it read better. The editor might have forgotten receiving your first release and might not have seen the re-issue.

5. Increase the odds of your press release being published. You can issue it simultaneously to the seven English broadsheets, the top business paper and the two top English tabloids. That's 10 newspapers and odds are your release will see print in at least one or two of them.