The Shifty Press Release
The debate over the value of the press release has raged pretty much unabated for the last seven or eight years. My pal Todd Defren literally built his PR firm on the back of his pathbreaking effort to re-imagine the press release of the future. (Yesterday, his company Shift Communications was named PR Agency of […]
The Aggregated Press Release
“These days PR is everything.” Or so starts a post titled “Press Releases: Friend or Foe” on editorsweblog.org, a “publication of the World Editors Forum.” The post goes on to talk about the value (or lack thereof) of the press release and a couple of new services that attempt to breathe new life into this […]
Long Live PR (and the Press Release Too)
Two posts caught my attention early this week. Both offered fairly dour assessments of the practice of public relations, and as expected, both were heavily re-tweeted into the media echo chamber. The first, from a trade journalist who no doubt has been on the receiving end of myriad PR come-ons and spam, declared that the […]
Recovery Release
Slate’s John Dickerson tweeted news that the administration has “revitalized the press release…with the launch of Recovery.gov.” The site sub-head reads “Your Money at Work” and includes the following mission statement: Education: Explain the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act; Transparency: Show how, when, and where the money is spent; Accountability: Provide data that will allow […]
The Juiced Up News Release
This week one of my clients issued a news release on one of the big paid wire services. The Google News Alert showed immediate and impressive results: Dow Jones Marketwatch, Yahoo Finance, and dozens of others including, for whatever reason, Earth Times. Yet, when searching for the story on the Marketwatch site, nothing popped. Huh? […]
“Thrilled” and “Excited”
“…according to a person briefed on the negotiations who would not be identified because the deal has not been formally announced.” This is from this morning’s New York Times business story by the paper’s youthful TV reporter and decoder Brian Stelter. It pre-reports the deal between Apple and HBO to finally offer for sale the […]
The News Release: Content or Context?
As PR types continue their obsession with the format and purpose of the modern-day news release, this resilient vehicle for allegedly breaking news continues to flourish in most industry circles. A quick scan of any 30-minute weekday block on Business Wire or PR Newswire will dispel any notion that the press release is dead. Even […]
Tainted News from NYC
Stu, a head’s up. The City of New York put out a news announcement today via one of the proliferating number of paid wire services. The release, about a city appointment, not only included a quote from Mayor Bloomberg, but it featured two Google-delivered contextual ads. Moreover, one of those ads attacked one of Mayor […]
SMNR Chipped Away
In the “Mixed Signals” blog on ZDNet, writer Rupert Goodwins today turns his critical eye to an IBM-issued press release heralding the latest nanotechnological development on the chip-making front. In his post, titled “IBM’s supercomputer chip breakthrough more PR than IT,” Mr. Goodwins dissects the news with reportorial flair. His conclusion: “It ain’t so. It […]
