How to Write a Press Release That Actually Gets Coverage

Writing a press release is simpler than most guides suggest and harder to do well than most first drafts show. If you know how to write a press release properly, the structure itself is 40 years old and has not changed: headline, lead paragraph, body, quote, boilerplate, contact. What kills most releases is not format violations. It is the habit of burying the actual news in paragraph three.

This guide covers structure, the specific failure points, where AI tools cut the drafting time, and where they add noise you will need to strip before sending.

The five-minute test journalists run on every release

When a release lands in a journalist's inbox, they spend roughly five minutes deciding whether to file it, forward it to a colleague, or delete it. That decision comes down to one question: can I write a story from this in the time I have before my next deadline?

Releases that pass this test share three characteristics. They state the news in the headline without editorializing. The lead paragraph answers who, what, when, where, and why in under 60 words. And the contact information points to someone who actually picks up when a journalist calls the morning the release goes out.

Releases that fail usually fail at the headline. "Company X Announces Exciting New Milestone" tells a journalist nothing. "Company X Raises $12M Series A to Expand Freight AI Platform to Southeast Asia" tells them everything they need to make a decision in ten seconds.

Seven components, none optional

A functional press release has seven parts. Skipping any of them adds friction for the journalist and reduces the probability that the story gets filed.

Headline (8 to 12 words): State the single most newsworthy fact. No adjectives. No corporate jargon. If you find yourself writing "industry-leading" or "best-in-class," delete both and replace with the actual metric they are supposed to support.

Subheadline (15 to 20 words): Add one layer of context the headline could not carry. This is where you name the lead investor, the customer count, or the market shift that makes this relevant right now.

Dateline: City, State, Month Day, Year in AP style. Not a field to improvise.

Lead paragraph (50 to 60 words): The five Ws in one paragraph. A journalist should be able to write a story from this paragraph alone if the rest of the release disappeared.

Body (two to three paragraphs): Proof points, context, data. This is not a second pitch. It is the information a journalist needs to verify and contextualize the claim in the lead.

Quote (one to two): More on this in the next section.

Boilerplate (under 75 words): Standard "About [Company]" language. Write it once, keep it updated each quarter.

Total word count target: 300 to 500 words. Releases over 600 words signal poor editorial judgment.

The lead paragraph: where most releases lose the story

The inverted pyramid is journalism's oldest structural principle: put the most important information first and the least important last. Press releases follow the same logic, but most corporate writers invert it accidentally. They build context before delivering the news.

Wrong: "In a year marked by unprecedented growth in the global logistics sector, Company X, a leading provider of freight optimization software founded in 2020, has announced..."

Right: "Company X today announced $12M in Series A funding to expand its freight route optimization software to Singapore, Malaysia, and the Philippines, where it already serves 18 logistics operators."

The second version takes 31 words. It contains a number, a geography, and a current customer reference. It is more specific and shorter than the first version.

Specificity is what makes a lead readable. In my work reviewing client press drafts, the most consistent note I give is: move the actual news to the first sentence. Not the second. Not the third. The first sentence.

The test is simple: if you removed everything after the first sentence of your lead paragraph, would a journalist still know what the story is? If the answer is no, rewrite the first sentence.

Another version of the test: read your lead paragraph aloud. If it takes you more than 15 seconds to get to the actual news, the news is not in the lead. Every sentence before "Company X announced Y" is a sentence that a journalist has to wade through before they can decide if this story is worth their time.

Quotes journalists can actually use

Most quotes in press releases are unusable. "We are thrilled to announce this milestone and look forward to continuing to serve our customers at a higher level" is not a quote. It is filler. Journalists edit it down to nothing or skip the story entirely.

A usable quote does two things. It adds a perspective that cannot be conveyed as straight fact. And it sounds like something a human would say in a real conversation, not in a prepared presentation.

Avoid: superlatives without data, excitement language ("delighted," "thrilled," "honored"), and quotes that simply restate what is already in the headline.

Use: one pointed observation from the CEO or founder, and one third-party voice from an investor, partner, or customer if available. Two to four sentences each, maximum.

Skip the second and third executive quotes if they all say the same thing. One sharp quote is more useful to a journalist than three pleasant ones.

Using AI for press releases: where it helps, where it adds noise

AI tools are genuinely useful at the first-draft stage of press release writing. Three specific jobs where they reduce the time significantly:

Structural scaffolding: given a bullet-point brief of the news facts, a tool like ChatGPT, Claude, or an AI copywriting platform will assemble a correctly structured draft in under two minutes. The structure will be right even when the prose is generic.

Boilerplate: company description paragraphs are formulaic by design. An AI tool that has ingested your website copy will generate a serviceable boilerplate faster than you will write one from scratch.

Headline variants: useful when you need three or four headline candidates to test with an editor or a press distribution platform's headline performance tool.

A practical prompt structure that produces clean first drafts: give the tool a numbered list of facts (funding amount, company name, product, geography, customer count), specify the format (seven-part press release, 400 words, AP style), and ask for three headline options at the top. The output will not be publishable, but it will be faster to edit than to write from scratch.

Two areas where AI does not handle press releases well. First, the quote. It will write a quote, and it will sound like every other AI-generated quote: pleasantly vague and attribution-proof. The quote needs a real voice, which means going back to the actual source. Second, the judgment call on what is genuinely newsworthy. If you give an AI tool a launch announcement and ask it to identify the strongest news hook, it will often default to the most obvious claim rather than the one that genuinely differentiates the story.

The pattern that holds in practice: AI writes the scaffold in two minutes, a human rewrites the quote and sharpens the lead in ten. That split is still a significant reduction in time per release compared to writing from a blank page.

The pre-send checklist

Before distributing a press release, run through this list:

Remove "we are pleased/excited/delighted to announce" and replace it with the announcement itself. The reader knows you are pleased. They do not need to be told.

Remove adjectives that assert quality without measurement: "leading," "innovative," "cutting-edge," "groundbreaking." Each one weakens credibility by substituting a claim for a fact.

Remove the second and third executive quotes if they repeat what is already in the first. One sharp quote lands better than three diluted ones.

Update the boilerplate. It should reflect the current company size, product focus, and geographic scope, not the version accurate two product launches ago.

Verify the contact details. Name, direct email, and a phone number of a person who is actually available to take a journalist's call the day the release goes out. A contact who does not respond within two hours of a journalist's inquiry is not a contact.

Targeted outreach covers more ground than broadcast distribution

Sending to a general newswire reaches everyone and almost no one specifically. Releases that generate actual coverage typically go to a targeted list of journalists who cover the relevant beat, sent from a sender they recognize or can place with a brief context line.

A list of 30 journalists who cover your specific sector will consistently outperform a 3,000-recipient broadcast distribution, particularly for announcements where volume reach is not the objective.

If you use a distribution service, layer it with direct outreach to the five to ten journalists most likely to care about this specific story. A two-sentence email with context, "I know you covered the logistics AI funding round in March; this announcement is directly adjacent," doubles the open rate on the release itself.

The press release is the artifact. The relationship and the pitch are what put it in front of the right person. Both matter.