By Frank J. Diekmann
I’d like to say it’s just that as I’ve gotten older I’ve become a curmudgeon, but as I’ve been reminded by a number of people who knew me when I was younger and who seemed all too happy to chime in on this issue, apparently it’s not a newly diagnosed condition.
But that said, if you’re wondering why so many of your press releases don’t get more press or are going unnoticed, it isn’t just because we in the media spend an increasing amount of our time making up fake news—many of the credit union press releases I see are often indecipherable.
I’m not just talking about the basic, poor grammar and punctuation—maybe there’s something to the claims Generation Text has entered the workforce and it shows—I’m talking about buried leads, releases that don’t answer the basic What, Who, Where, When and Why questions, and overly long tomes where the message is so hidden the release should be the next installment in the National Treasure movie series.
And here’s another pet peeve—or perhaps I should say, Another pet peeve have I. That’s because it appears Yoda no longer limits himself to educating Jedi Knights and has expanded into students of English. Ooops, sorry, expanded into students of English has he.
Here’s a lesson from Basic Press Release 101: Source attributions should appear after the quoted statement has begun. Example: “I don’t understand this press release,” said Freddie Filene.
But in some strange mass pivot that began about a year ago, it’s hard to exaggerate the number of press releases that now present quotes this way: Said Freddie Filene, “I don’t understand this press release.” Or, and this happens often, “Commenting on the press release situation, Freddie Filene said…”
Just Putting This Subhead Here Because I'm Getting Paid By The Word
And that’s not all. It’s abundantly clear a lot of PR freelancers get paid by the word—an odd juxtaposition for the “authors” of these releases who otherwise communicate in limited, 140-character exchanges. Why write, “Phil Lossofee has been named vice president…,” when you can fill some space with “Phil Lossofee has been announced as having been named to the position of vice president”? Same thing is true for “Fundraising will take place during January.” As all the seemingly new PR folks learned stretching those papers during college, you can make that “Fundraising is scheduled to take place during the month of January.”
Said Frank J. Diekmann in commenting prior to the quotation that follows during the month of February: “Just get to the point.”
And while I’m at it, get off my grass. Thank you.
Frank J. Diekmann is Cooperator in Chief at CUToday.info.