News Releases

Yayyy, finally, something that’s absolutely not trying to seem objective! News releases are full of sloppy self-promotion, and they’re just disgustingly subjective. But I wouldn’t say I like this extreme as opposed to the hypocritical objectivity of mainstream press.

The book was really, really sarcastic when discussing news releases. The authors pointed out that news releases are basically free ads. This actually made me think about why organizations make public events. Do they have them to promote themselves or to have something to send out to the press in form of a news release? For example, a company has a promotion night with 200 people showing up. Then the next day they send out a news release saying that there was this event hosted by this or that organization that promotes whatever. Which one was more successful? Organizing an event with 200 guests? Or getting thousands of people read about it in a newspaper?

Also, the book made a point that I found interesting, namely that after reading a news release I have to finish the reporting. So, I guess I should treat information coming from PR people as half of a story, right?

Oh, and then the book talks about what I should if I want to go into PR. That was terrific. I almost stared to cry! Even if I went into writing news releases, I couldn’t get rid of AP style and the accuracy! Are these two going to haunt me all my life?! Maybe I should be a dogcatcher instead of a journalist. Then I would have a higher starting salary than a teacher (according to a news release.) But that news release was not accurate. Man, accuracy affects even dogcatchers!