A 600-word document headlined “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE,” three paragraphs of executive quotes, and a boilerplate about the company at the bottom: that’s still the default press release template in 2026, and it’s one of the weakest ways to get media coverage. Journalists recognize the shape of it before they’ve read a word, and they move on.
I’ve sent press releases that got exactly zero responses. I’ve also sent 80-word emails that landed national coverage.
The format itself is the problem, not your writing or your timing. Third-party research analyzing 5,272 media placements from a leading UK digital PR agency backs this up, and it matches what we see running campaigns off our own database of 27,000+ journalists: story-first pitches beat announcement-first press releases, every time.
Plenty of readers landed here because someone told them a press release is simply how PR works, and plenty of situations genuinely still call for one. So this covers both: how to write a press release that doesn’t get deleted on sight, and what to send instead when what you actually want is coverage rather than a filed document.
Why 95% of Press Releases Fail
Journalists get 50-300 pitches a day. If yours doesn’t land in the first two sentences, it’s dead. Picture the other end of that inbox: a reporter on deadline, editor wanting the piece by 3pm, scanning for anything usable right now.
Your press release lands. Subject line: “XYZ Company Announces Exciting New Product Launch.” They don’t open it.
If they do open it, what greets them is a 600-word document in corporate speak, three paragraphs about how “thrilled” your CEO is, a committee-written quote, and a boilerplate nobody asked for. They close the tab and move on.
I’ve sent those press releases myself and wondered why nobody responded. Then I spent years studying what journalists actually respond to, and the gap between what companies send and what journalists want turned out to be enormous. The standard format fails for a few concrete reasons:
No news value. “Company launches product” is not news. “Company hires executive” is not news. “Company wins award” is not news. These matter to your company. They don’t matter to a journalist’s readers.
Company-centric instead of story-centric. Your press release talks about you. Journalists need stories about their audience. That’s a fundamental mismatch.
Too long. Journalists scan, they don’t read 600-word documents from strangers. If your angle isn’t obvious in the first two sentences, it doesn’t exist as far as they’re concerned.
No hook. Why cover this today instead of next week, or never? A press release without urgency is just a brochure.
I go deeper on this in why press releases get ignored and what to send instead. What follows is the practical, do-it-yourself version.
The Press Release Template Everyone Uses (And Why It Doesn’t Work)
This is the format on every “how to write a press release” article you’ll find, built for a media landscape that no longer exists.
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>
> [City, Date]
>
> [Company Name] Announces [Thing]
>
> [City, State] — [Company Name], a leading provider of [industry thing], today announced [product/partnership/milestone]. The [thing] will enable customers to [benefit] while [other benefit].
>
> “We are excited to [blah blah],” said [CEO Name], CEO of [Company]. “This [thing] represents our commitment to [buzzword] and [buzzword].”
>
> [Two more paragraphs of features and benefits nobody asked for]
>
> About [Company]
> [200-word boilerplate about your company history, mission, and how many countries you operate in]
>
> Media Contact:
> [Name, email, phone]
You’ve probably received a dozen press releases that look exactly like this. This format was built for wire services in the 1990s, when journalists relied on the wire for story leads. That world is gone.
Today journalists find stories on social media, in their beats, from colleagues, and from pitches that actually catch their attention. The formal press release format signals “this is probably not a real story” before they’ve read a word.
Pro Tip
Write your headline like a news headline, not a marketing message. “Company X Launches Product” fails. “Industry Data Reveals 40% Shift in Consumer Behavior” works.
How to Write a Press Release That Actually Works
If you must write one for a regulatory announcement, executive hire, or funding round, these five rules keep it from being terrible.
Rule 1: Lead with the headline a journalist would write
Not the headline you want, the headline they’d actually put on the story. Not the one your CEO approves either.
Bad: “TechCorp Announces Launch of Revolutionary AI Platform”
Good: “UK Workers Lose 4.2 Hours Per Week to Broken Internal Tools, New Study Finds”
The first is about the company. The second is about the reader. A journalist can use the second almost verbatim. The first goes in the bin.
Rule 2: First paragraph answers “why should anyone care?”
Not who you are or what you did, but why a reader of The Guardian or TechCrunch should care right now.
Bad: “TechCorp, a leading enterprise software company founded in 2019, today announced the launch of TechFlow 3.0, its next-generation workflow automation platform.”
Good: “A study of 2,000 UK office workers found that the average employee loses 4.2 hours per week to malfunctioning internal tools, costing British businesses an estimated £28 billion annually.”
The data is the lead. The company comes later. Much later.
Rule 3: Keep it under 300 words
If you can’t explain why your news matters in 300 words, it either doesn’t matter or you don’t understand why yet. A longer document won’t fix that.
Rule 4: Include data, not adjectives
“Revolutionary,” “innovative,” “cutting-edge,” “best-in-class”: these words mean nothing. They’re the verbal equivalent of elevator music, and journalists are trained to skip past them.
Numbers tell stories. Percentages surprise people. Comparisons create context. Use those instead.
Rule 5: Write a quote that sounds human
The biggest tell that a press release was written by committee is the executive quote. It usually reads like this:
> “We are thrilled to be at the forefront of innovation in the workflow automation space. This launch represents our unwavering commitment to empowering businesses with transformative solutions.”
Nobody talks like that. Nobody has ever been “thrilled to be at the forefront” of anything. Write a quote that sounds like something a person would say out loud.
> “We found that most office workers spend nearly a full day every week fighting their own tools. That’s a problem worth solving, so we built something to fix it.”
Same information, completely different energy.
What Works Better Than a Press Release
In most cases, skip the press release format entirely. Across the placements research mentioned earlier, the campaigns that generate the most coverage use one of three approaches instead.
Approach 1: The Data Pitch
Pitch a data story that happens to involve your expertise, instead of announcing something about your company. Lead with the finding, not the brand.
This is the approach that shifted my own results from buying links to earning editorial coverage in national publications. The journalist gets a story. You get a link and a mention. Everyone wins.
Want to see it in action? I wrote a full guide on how to pitch journalists, with templates you can steal. The data pitch template in there has generated more coverage than every press release I’ve ever sent, combined.
Approach 2: Reactive Expert Commentary
A news story breaks in your area of expertise, and you offer the journalist covering it a data point or quote they don’t have yet.
This works because the journalist is already writing the story and needs sources. You’re not pitching something new, you’re adding value to something already in motion.
The window is usually 2 to 4 hours. Move fast and you earn the link. Wait for legal to approve a press release and the moment’s gone.
Approach 3: The Original Study
Publish genuine research with real methodology instead of a press release about your product. Findings that surprise people create their own news value.
This is the approach that compounds, since other writers keep citing your study for months after publication. One good study can outperform a year of press releases.
We built Presslei around this approach. Our first campaign was for Chatronix, studying political bias in AI chatbots. It didn’t hit every target, I’ll be honest about that, but the methodology created a citable asset that still generates interest.
Side by Side: Bad Press Release vs. Good Pitch
Same company, same general topic, completely different result, laid out side by side below.
The Traditional Press Release
> Subject: StyleBrand Announces Revolutionary New Sustainable Fashion Line
>
> FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
>
> London, UK — StyleBrand, a leading sustainable fashion company, today announced the launch of its Spring 2026 collection, featuring 100% recycled materials and carbon-neutral manufacturing…
>
> [400 more words about the collection, quotes from the CEO and the head of sustainability, a paragraph about StyleBrand’s mission, and a boilerplate]
Result: 0 responses out of 150 sends.
The Data-Led Pitch
> Subject: Data: UK consumers pay 340% markup for “sustainable” fashion labels
>
> Hi Sarah,
>
> Loved your piece last week on greenwashing in fast fashion. We just analyzed pricing data across 200 UK fashion brands and found that items labeled “sustainable” carry an average 340% markup over comparable non-labeled items, with some brands charging over 500%.
>
> Full data breakdown here if useful for your coverage: [link]
>
> Happy to share the dataset or connect you with our sustainability analyst for a quote.
>
> Salva
Result: 8 responses, 4 placements, including one in a national publication.
The press release talks about the company. The pitch gives the journalist a story. That’s really the whole lesson: the first paragraph is the only one most journalists will read, so if the news isn’t clear in fifty words, you’ve already lost them.
The 5 Minute Press Release Test
Already wrote a press release? Run it through these five questions before you send it.
1. Would a journalist use your headline verbatim? Read it out loud. Does it sound like the BBC or TechCrunch, or a corporate newsletter? If the latter, rewrite it.
2. Does your first sentence contain a number? Data hooks outperform everything else. No specific statistic in the opening line usually means it’s not newsworthy enough.
3. Is your company mentioned in the first paragraph? If yes, you’ve led with the wrong thing. The story comes first, your company comes later as the source of the data or the expert quote.
4. Can you delete the boilerplate without losing anything? If removing “About Company” doesn’t change the story, it was always dead weight. Interested journalists will Google you.
5. Would you forward this to a friend? Not as an obligation. Would you actually send it and say “interesting, right”? If not, a journalist won’t think their readers care either.
Fail more than two of these and don’t send it. Rewrite it as a pitch instead, using the data pitch template above as your starting point.
Common Press Release Mistakes I See Every Week
These show up over and over, and each one is a quick fix.
The “we’re thrilled” opening. Nobody cares that you’re thrilled. Start with the story, not your feelings about it.
Sending to “Dear Journalist.” Not knowing the journalist’s name means you haven’t done enough research. A generic salutation tells them you’re mass-mailing, and they’re right.
Attaching a PDF. Most journalists won’t open attachments from strangers. Put everything in the email body and link to supporting materials on your site.
Including three company quotes. One quote, one person, maximum. Journalists need one quotable expert, not a panel discussion, and it needs to sound like something a human would say out loud.
Burying the data. A surprising statistic belongs in the subject line and the first sentence, not in paragraph four after three paragraphs of company context.
No visual assets. If your story has a visual angle, chart, infographic, or photo, link to it rather than attaching it. Visual stories get more coverage because editors can publish them faster.
Forgetting the ask. What do you want the journalist to do: reply for the dataset, interview your expert, visit your study page? Make the ask clear and easy.
Pro Tip
Include a pre-written quote that’s actually quotable: specific, opinionated, under 30 words. Generic “We’re excited to announce” quotes get cut every time.
When a Press Release Is Actually the Right Move
There are cases where the traditional format is genuinely the right call:
Funding announcements. Raised a Series B? A press release to the relevant startup/VC press is standard, since the money itself is the news value.
Regulatory or legal requirements. Public companies and certain industries have disclosure requirements. Press releases serve a compliance function here.
Crisis communications. When something goes wrong and you need an official statement out fast, the formal tone actually fits.
Major executive changes. CEO transitions at significant companies are genuinely newsworthy, and the wire format works.
For everything else, skip it. Write a pitch, lead with data, make the journalist’s job easier instead of harder.
So, Press Release or Pitch?
If you’re only picking one: pitches for exclusive stories and relationship-building, press releases for broad announcements where every outlet needs the same information at the same time and for the SEO value of the wire placement. Most companies reaching for “how to write a press release” actually need the pitch. That’s the version that gets replies.
The Bottom Line
I wasted years sending press releases that went nowhere before I figured out what actually works: data-led pitches over announcements.
That shift is what made me start Presslei after seeing the model work for Hockerty and Sumissura.
If you want to test this yourself, start with our pitch headline analyzer to see if your angle is strong enough. Or check out 10 PR campaign formats that actually work for ideas that go way beyond the press release.
Your story deserves better than a format designed for fax machines.
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About the Author
Salvador Jovells
Founder of Presslei. 12+ years in ecommerce SEO across international markets. After a decade of link buying for Hockerty and Sumissura, I reverse-engineered 5,272 earned media placements and founded a reactive PR agency that builds authority through data-driven stories journalists actually want to publish. Based in Zurich.
