News Worthiness

News worthiness, accuracy and intelligibility

Press data announcing publicity materials in brief is called `press release`. It is recognised not only as an introduction of the product or service but also as a public relations tool, which shows corporate publicity skill and colour of information senders to journalists realistically. It could be the first stage for the person in charge of public relations to show a sense of publicity. One or two pages of data for press club announcement and three to five for press conferences are normally released in A4 lengthwise paper. Surrounded with overwhelming information, journalists need compact press release with correct key points of the subject. Recently more corporations and local public organizations are using individual letterheads in their press releases trying to convey good image at the first impression.

The contents of press release

Press release should include 5W1H (when, where, who, what, why, and how) about publicity materials and list concrete information of the theme (product feature and function explanation), development background (market background), outline, the marketing plan and reference.

The style of news release

It is essential to avoid emotional expression as much as possible and lay emphasis on accuracy of information. Numerical facts such as date, price, size, quantity and years should be accurate. The style should be concise and reasonable for busy journalists. 1.clear understanding and arrangement of what to tell about the material 2.correct grammar and spelling based on the fact 3.rhythmical succinct sentences to the point 4.illustlations with a graph and a table of data

Superiors, colleagues and the person in charge of development should revise the manuscript. It is also effective to review it the next day and get someone who knows nothing about the material to read it through.

1) It tends to be difficult to report information when journalists don’t have enough knowledge and data about it.

Therefore, it is one of important publicity work to provide them with useful relevant information collected as reference data when you aim at media coverage and the creation of media relations.

2) Press release should not be a pamphlet

Recently there seem to be many corporations that use too courteous words in press release though it should be just ‘press data’. They pick up some sentences from a pamphlet for consumers or use polite words for clients than necessary. Keeping in mind that it is just data, changing unnecessary polite words to normal makes the style clear and neat.

3) Preparations of visual data

Recent technological innovation in the press and wire agencies allows photos attached in press release to be used without modification. However, photogravure pages need colour positive and TV news need data image and production of pictures by covering the subject, that is to say, each medium requires a different type of visual data for its own. It is vital to prepare and arrange proper visual data, which suits each medium characteristics, in order to promote more effective news on larger scale.

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