I remember the exact moment I stopped believing in press releases as a primary tool. I had sent out a beautifully crafted, perfectly formatted, embargo-timed press release for a client. It had all the ingredients: a strong headline, a punchy quote from the CEO, a solid boilerplate. And then I watched it disappear into the inbox abyss of 47 journalists, generating exactly two responses — one asking to be removed from our list, and one auto-reply from a journalist on holiday.
The press release has not died because journalists became lazy. It died because we — the PR community — killed it. We drowned journalists in a flood of templated, self-congratulatory, generic announcements that wasted their time. We trained them to ignore us.
What works today is radically different. It is the pitch that begins with ‘here’s why your readers should care.’ It is the data point that a journalist cannot find anywhere else. It is the human story wrapped around a business development. It is the relationship built over months, so that when your story lands in an inbox, it lands with context, credibility, and genuine relevance.
I have clients who still want to start every engagement with, ‘Can we draft a press release?’ And every single time, I ask them the same question: who is this for? If the answer is ‘for our website,’ fine. If the answer is ‘to get media coverage,’ then we need to have a very different conversation.
Media today is fragmented, specialised, and brutally time-poor. Journalists are covering three beats where they used to cover one. Their audience expects depth, context, and original insight. A press release that says ‘We are delighted to announce’ offers none of those things.
The future of PR communication is editorial thinking. Think like a journalist. Be the journalist. Develop stories, not announcements. Build relationships, not distribution lists. And for the love of this profession, stop sending embargoed press releases on Friday afternoons.
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