Strategy for handling corporate press releases

By Reynolds Center Staff
June 29, 2004 03:44 PM

What is your strategy for dealing with corporate press releases?

Nowadays, I get most of my news releases via e-mail, so the first thing I look for is the sender. If the sender's address is disguised or seems illegitimate, I hit "delete" pretty fast. If the sender's address is clear and of a recognizable domain (.com, .edu, .org, .gov, etc.), I spend about 4 seconds scanning the headline and lead. I am warier of releases that come from an outsourced flack than from an organization itself, and I immediately toss any that tell me, "Mr. Pundit Wannabe is available for an interview to hold forth on any topic under the sun." After a once-through of my inbox, I go back and look at the ones that made the first cut. It sounds cheesy, but I really do apply the news criteria they teach in j-school. Because I write a briefs column, I pay special attention to timeliness and impact. -Lorrie Grant, "Moneyline" writer, USA Today

When I'm looking at corporate press releases I'm looking for newsworthy items. There really are no rules on what is and what isn't newsworthy. So I'll try to give some of my thinking and a few examples.

First, I want to see a local company doing something. Our metro area has roughly 1.5 million residents and I estimate almost 100,000 companies. But less than 1 percent of those companies bother to issue press releases announcing what they're doing or even if they've promoted their own people.

Second, I look for non-local companies that are doing something in my local area.

I get about eight press releases a day. Half of those press releases are from local companies and the rest are from out-of-state companies. And about half of all those press releases are useless.

A typical press release is from an out-of-state company, often that I've never heard of, claiming that they're doing business differently. The other useless press releases announce that the company has been in business for X number of years or that its employees did some minor charity work. All of that doesn't interest me.

What does interest me is change. Because I'm a local business journal, I'm most interested in companies that are making change in their local workforce or making change in their business strategy.

Let me give 6 examples from recent press releases:

1. Old Dominion Freight Line Inc. of Thomasville, N.C., is a local company that announced it is raising its trucking rates to its customers this summer. I'm very interested in this. I immediately did a story after interviewing the president of the company as well as the presidents of four other local trucking companies, who said they planned to follow Old Dominion's move and raise rates later this summer. There was no change to employment but there was local impact and "change."

2. Market America of Greensboro is a major local company whose president was just named to the board of directors of an industry trade association. I'm going to write a news brief about this and put it on our web site. There's not too much change but it is a local company so I'll give them a mention.

3. Pulaski Furniture is a Virginia furniture maker that sent a press release about a new line of upholstered living room couches and chairs. Furniture manufacturing is the second-largest industry in my community and Pulaski is one of the five largest furniture companies. Pulaski is just outside my readership area and all they're doing is making minor changes to their products. So I'm not going to do anything with that press release (although the furniture trade magazines will end up doing an 8-inch story on that announcement.)

4. Sealy Mattress in Trinity, N.C., is one of the largest companies in this community. They employ about 1,000 workers at their main plant in town and their corporate headquarters is also here. Sealy has been issuing press releases about contributing to the local food bank and that the company has a new series of television commercials. I did nothing with either of these press releases because I saw no great change and no great local impact (no, I don't consider standard charitable giving to be of local impact). Oddly enough, a daily newspaper just outside this market did do a story about Sealy's new television ads and bedding industry trade journals wrote about the TV ads, so Sealy didn't waste its time sending out the press release.

5. Coca-Cola, based out-of-state in Atlanta, sent out press releases about its new low-carb soft drink C2. Coke has three bottling plants in this area and I called all three, where I was sent to the corporate headquarters and spoke to the vice president of marketing. He said he'd get back to me the next day and was very excited that we were going to be writing about this major new product launch. He never called back. I was willing to do a small story discussing how the local bottling plants were having to make some adjustments to make the new product and distribute it. But he local impact wasn't great enough for me to pursue the story so I dropped it. All the local TV stations did stories about the C2 release, their stories showed clips of Coke's TV commercial and the newscasters announced that this was the first new product launch in a year for Coke. The TV stations gave no local impact and Coke got free publicity and I assume everybody was happy.

6. Pilot Air Freight Inc., based in Philadelphia, sent a press release announcing that its office here in Greensboro handled 28 percent more cargo shipments this quarter than a year ago. The company is not being more specific about the dollar value of its local business and the company only has 9 employees here. So I'm holding onto that press release and will use that information in a story later this month discussing how cargo shipments are up 5 percent this year from our local airport. I'll refer to Pilot Air Freight in that story and will probably call Pilot Air Freight to get a photo in their local warehouse of a forklift moving crates to illustrate the story. I see some local impact and some local change in that press release. And, frankly, I appreciate the company giving any kind of numbers to help illustrate the point they're trying to make in their press release.

So to reiterate, I'm looking for "local" and I'm looking for "change." Yes, news judgment uses very fuzzy logic. -Mick Normington, Business Reporter, The Business Journal of the Triad (N.C.)

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