What University Doesn't Teach You About Media Releases

Media releases are the most basic, simple forms of controlled information that PR students learn in the first couple of PR units at university. They teach you the layout, format, what to include and writing style. These techniques are useful, but not universal and sometimes outdated. The following points are important notes I have learned from the marketing team at Hames Sharley that I would have never thought about.

1.  Media releases aren’t just organizational bragging pieces

2. Always send the release as PDF or similar document that cannot be manipulated

3. You don’t get 2 – 3 weeks to draft one like with uni assignments

In about the third week of my internship, I had completed my final draft of a media release I had been working on the previous two weeks. Pretty proud of it, confident it was in the correct layout and all fancy in the HS template, I sent it on to the rest of the marketing team. I was pretty shocked when it was sent back all marked up with about a page of feedback. I was less upset than I was in awe. There was so much realistic advise that I had been searching for at uni and never been able to find. She slammed the piece for being a brag material rather than something interesting that people would want to read and that editors would pick up. At uni they teach you newsworthiness, I thought I had satisfied that but I had presented it in a way that wasn’t interesting to the general public. This is an experience I am extremely happy to have had and will not soon forget throughout my career.

The next few releases I worked on were simply project updates that consisted of about two sentences each to be sent for a specific magazine segment. I finished them, pasted into the template and sent to the marketing team for approval. Before sending them to the editor, Bec (Marketing Assistant) provided me with a few pointers in the outgoing email. She instructed me never to send a Word doc and only ever export to PDF. She explained that this helps to decrease human error, maintain credibility and hold parties accountable for the correct information. For example if the editor were to open a Word doc and accidentally press a random key without noticing and publishing it thereafter, it affects the magazine’s image, but if we can prove who’s error it was, the appropriate party can take responsibility. It also reduces incentive to manipulate a controlled piece of information which is handy if your relationship with the editor isn’t necessarily strong.

At university, you get sometimes up to four weeks to submit a media release as part of an assignment. I don’t see the point of the assignment when this is completely irrelevant to timing in real life. I assume in most cases you get only a couple days. Luckily at my internship, I get about two weeks tops because I’m only there two days per week. If the release is prolonged anymore than this, the information simply becomes outdated and useless because editors will just look over it and throw it out. The newsworthiness decreases with time. The more time you spend drafting it, getting your facts right and finally sending it out, the less chance you will have of it being published or even sent to be published. This happened to me with my first release. I worked really hard but by the time I got around to sending it out, the marketing coordinator said it’s only good enough for the internal newsletter now. A fantastic learning, yet steep curve.