40 Press Release Tips from a Working Editor
How to Get Your Press Release Opened, Read and Published
I receive hundreds of press releases every single day from companies, PR agencies, manufacturers, contractors, technology businesses, researchers, event organisers and organisations around the world.
Some immediately look promising. Others are deleted within seconds. Some contain a genuinely good story but make it so difficult to find, verify or illustrate that they never make it to publication.
That may sound harsh, but it reflects the reality of a busy editorial inbox.
Your press release isn’t only competing with other companies in your industry. It is competing with every other story, email, announcement and demand for an editor’s attention. AI has made it easier than ever to produce content and personalise outreach at scale, which means the volume of material competing for that attention is only increasing.
The fundamentals of good media relations therefore matter more, not less.
Over the years, I have reviewed and published thousands of press releases. The best PR professionals understand something very simple: their job is not merely to send information. Their job is to make it as easy as possible for an editor to recognise a good story and do something with it.
These 40 tips are based on what actually helps from my side of the editorial desk.
Before You Start: The Editor Is Your Customer
When you send a press release, your immediate customer is the editor.
Of course, the ultimate objective is to reach the publication’s readers and, through them, potential customers, investors, partners or other stakeholders. But first you have to get through the person deciding whether your story deserves their attention.
Think about the process from their perspective.
Why should they open your email? Why should they continue beyond the first sentence? Why is this relevant to their publication? Where is the story? Can they trust the information? Are there usable photographs? Are the important links included? Can they quickly clarify something if necessary?
Every question you leave unanswered creates friction. And every extra thing an editor has to do reduces the likelihood that your story will be published.
The objective isn’t simply to persuade an editor to publish one press release.
Become a source they want to hear from.
Getting the Editor’s Attention
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Build the Relationship Before You Need It
One of the most valuable things you can do in PR has nothing to do with writing a press release.
Get to know the editors and journalists who cover your industry.
Read their publications. Subscribe to their newsletters. Follow their work. Connect on LinkedIn. Meet them at exhibitions and conferences. Introduce yourself when you don’t immediately need something from them.
An editor who recognises your name will approach your email differently from another anonymous message in an overflowing inbox.
That doesn’t guarantee coverage, nor should it. What it gives you is recognition and context.
Over time, consistently sending relevant information, answering questions quickly and being easy to work with builds something considerably more valuable: trust.
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Become Useful, Not Familiar
Simply connecting with an editor on LinkedIn isn’t a relationship.
Being useful is.
A good media contact can provide technical information, photographs, background material, access to knowledgeable people and quick clarification when something isn’t clear.
Eventually, the relationship may start working in both directions.
An editor might contact you because they need an expert comment, an example of a technology being used, a photograph from a project or an informed view of something happening in your market.
At that point your company has become more than another source of press releases. It has become part of the editor’s professional network.
That is extremely valuable.
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Know the Publication
Don’t send everything to everyone.
Spend a few minutes looking at the publication before approaching it. What industries does it cover? What sort of stories does it publish? Is its audience local, national or global? Does it cover products, projects, research, corporate news, technology or events?
Highways.Today, for example, has an international professional audience. Geographic context, technical information and industry relevance therefore matter to me.
Sending irrelevant material doesn’t merely waste an email. Do it repeatedly and you teach the editor that your emails can safely be ignored.
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Find the Right Person
Where possible, identify the editor or journalist responsible for the subject you are pitching.
A carefully targeted email to one appropriate person is usually worth considerably more than adding another 500 addresses to a distribution list.
If the publication provides PR submission instructions, read them. Editors have usually written those instructions because they are trying to make the process easier for everybody.
Ignoring them is not a promising introduction.
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Treat the Email as Marketing
Writing a good press release is only half the job.
You still have to persuade somebody to open it.
The sender name, subject line, preview text, opening sentence and first few lines of your email are all part of the marketing process.
If they fail, the quality of the press release attached to the email becomes irrelevant because nobody will ever read it.
Think carefully about the entire journey:
Sender → Subject line → Opening sentence → Pitch → Press release → Publication
At every stage, you can lose the editor.
Writing the Pitch
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Make the Subject Line Explain the Story
Your subject line should help an editor understand what the email contains without having to open it.
Avoid vague subjects such as:
- Exciting Announcement from XYZ
- Major Industry News
- Story Opportunity
- Thought This Might Interest You
They tell me virtually nothing.
Something like:
- PRESS RELEASE: Volvo trials autonomous loader at Swedish quarry
immediately tells me what the story is about.
Clarity beats cleverness.
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Put the News in the Opening Sentence
Don’t spend the most valuable sentence in the email telling me that you hope I am well.
Tell me what happened.
Editors often see the first few words of an email in the inbox preview before opening it. Use that space.
A strong opening should quickly establish who has done what and, where relevant, where it happened or why it matters.
Get to the story.
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Tell the Editor What You Want
This sounds obvious. It often isn’t.
Are you asking the publication to cover the announcement? Interview your managing director? Attend an event? Review a product? Speak to an engineer? Consider an contributed article?
Say so.
There is nothing wrong with:
- Would this be of interest for Highways.Today?
or:
- Would you be interested in speaking with our Technical Director about the project?
Don’t make the editor work out why you emailed them.
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Keep the Pitch Short
The email introducing a press release does not need to become another press release.
Tell me what the story is, why you think it is relevant and what you are offering.
Then give me the material.
Long introductions create another obstacle between the editor and the actual story.
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Relevance Beats Fake Personalisation
AI has made personalised-looking outreach incredibly easy.
An email that begins by praising an article I wrote last week isn’t persuasive if the story being pitched has nothing whatsoever to do with Highways.Today.
Editors are becoming increasingly familiar with automated personalisation.
You don’t need to demonstrate that a system has scraped my last five headlines. Demonstrate that you understand the publication and have something genuinely relevant for its readers.
Relevance is more persuasive than personalisation.
Writing the Pitch
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Start With the News, Not the Company
A press release is not a corporate brochure.
Start with what has happened.
A contract has been awarded. A machine has been launched. A project has reached a milestone. Research has produced an interesting result. A company has entered a new market. A technology has solved a particular problem.
The company background can come later.
Give the editor the story first.
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Ask Whether It Is Actually News
Not every company development deserves a press release.
Ask yourself why somebody outside the company should care.
A new website probably isn’t news. A minor internal appointment may not be news outside a specialist audience. Calling an ordinary product update “revolutionary” doesn’t make it revolutionary.
Conversely, something your company considers routine may be genuinely interesting to an industry publication because of the engineering, technology, market trend or problem behind it.
Look for the story, not merely the announcement.
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Answer the Five Ws
- Who?
- What?
- When?
- Where?
- Why?
These fundamentals remain extraordinarily useful.
I regularly receive material that fails to state exactly where a project is located, when something happened or what a new technology is actually being used for.
Don’t assume knowledge.
This is particularly important when approaching international publications. Your local geography, company structure or industry terminology may be completely obvious to you and unfamiliar to readers elsewhere.
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Explain Why It Matters
Facts tell me what happened. Context tells me why I might publish it.
A new excavator has been launched. Fine.
What problem does it address? What has changed from the previous machine? Is it entering a new size class? Does it use a different powertrain? Is there a significant productivity, safety or emissions story?
Give the editor enough substance to see the wider significance.
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Give Me Facts and Numbers
Specific information makes stories stronger.
Investment values, project lengths, machine capacities, contract durations, performance improvements, quantities, dates and technical specifications all help turn corporate claims into useful information.
But numbers need context.
If something improves productivity by 25%, tell me compared with what.
If emissions have fallen by 30%, explain the baseline.
If it is the “largest” project of its kind, tell me by what measure and provide evidence for the claim.
Make the Release Worth Publishing
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Write a Headline That Says Something
A press release headline should communicate the news.
Avoid trying to manufacture excitement with words such as revolutionary, game-changing, groundbreaking or world-leading unless there is a very good reason for using them.
Editors will usually write their own headline anyway.
Your job is to make the subject immediately understandable.
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Put the Important Information First
Editors shouldn’t have to reach paragraph seven before discovering why the announcement matters.
Use the traditional inverted-pyramid principle: lead with the strongest and most important information, then add detail and background as the release progresses.
If somebody only reads the first three paragraphs, they should still understand the story.
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Write for Humans
Corporate language makes straightforward stories unnecessarily difficult.
Avoid jargon, management clichés and sentences that have clearly passed through six departments before being approved.
Write naturally.
Technical language is perfectly appropriate when the audience understands it. Corporate fog isn’t.
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Give Me Quotes That Add Something
A quote should provide something the factual paragraphs cannot.
Why was a decision made? What was difficult? What did the company learn? Why does the technology matter? What happens next?
Quotes that merely tell me somebody is “delighted”, “thrilled”, “proud” or “excited” about an announcement add very little.
Give your spokesperson something worth saying.
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Don’t Turn the Release Into an Advert
A press release can promote your company without reading like advertising copy.
Unsupported superlatives, excessive product claims and repeated marketing slogans make editorial work harder because they have to be removed or independently verified.
Provide the evidence and let the strength of the story do the selling.
Remove the Friction
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Give the Editor Everything at Once
This may be the most practical advice in this guide.
Don’t send half a story.
If I decide an announcement is interesting and then discover that I need to email you for photographs, hunt for the product page, search for the company website and ask where the project is located, the story has suddenly become considerably less attractive.
Another good story may already be sitting beside it with everything I need.
Don’t make the editor become your researcher.
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Include the Full Release in the Email
Attachments are useful, but don’t make opening an attachment the only way to discover what the story is about.
Include the release in the body of the email where practical and attach an editable copy if you wish.
That allows the editor to scan the story immediately.
It also removes another click.
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Use Editable Formats
If you attach the release, a Word document is generally much easier for an editor to work with than a PDF.
PDFs are useful for reports, brochures and supporting documents. They are less useful when somebody needs to extract, edit and restructure the text.
Make the material easy to use.
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Provide the Relevant Links
Don’t simply provide the company homepage and expect the editor to find everything else.
If the release concerns a product, link to the product.
If it concerns research, link to the original research.
If it concerns an event, link to the event.
If there is a useful project page, technical document, report or supporting source, include it.
And check that the links work before pressing Send.
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Make Supporting Material Easy to Access
If photographs or other files are too large for email, provide a straightforward download link.
Don’t make an editor create an account, subscribe to a service, request access or wait for somebody to approve permission before they can see the material.
Every unnecessary step is another opportunity for the story to be abandoned.
Images and Multimedia
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Send Usable Images
A strong photograph can make the difference between a story looking publishable and looking incomplete.
Supply original, high-resolution images wherever possible.
Don’t send tiny thumbnails, screenshots or images embedded inside a Word document and expect the publication to somehow restore the missing quality.
An editor can reduce a large image.
We cannot put missing pixels back.
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Only Send Images You Have Permission to Publish
This is important.
If you supply an image to the media, make sure you have the necessary rights or commercial permission for that image to be reproduced by the publication.
Don’t download something from Google Images, another website, a photographer’s portfolio or somebody else’s social media account and include it because it looks suitable.
If there are restrictions on use, tell the editor.
The publication should not have to investigate whether the image you supplied can legally be published.
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Provide the Correct Image Credit
If the photographer, company, agency or copyright holder needs to be credited, provide the exact credit.
If no credit is required, it can be helpful to say so.
Don’t make the editor guess who owns an image.
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Caption Your Images
Tell us what we’re looking at.
Who is pictured? What machine is it? Which project? Where was the photograph taken? What is happening?
A filename such as DSC_4738_FINAL2.jpg isn’t a caption.
Good captions reduce mistakes and make images considerably easier to use.
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Give the Editor a Sensible Choice
One image is sometimes not enough.
One hundred images are usually too many.
Provide a useful selection showing different aspects of the story. For many industry stories, a mix of strong landscape photographs, detail shots and perhaps an image showing the product or project in context gives an editor useful options.
Quality and relevance matter more than filling a folder.
Timing, Contacts and Follow-Up
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Think Carefully Before Imposing an Embargo
Your news may be important to your company. That doesn’t necessarily mean it is important enough to justify an embargo.
Embargoes have a legitimate purpose. Major corporate announcements, significant research, financial results, complex technical developments and genuinely important news may need to be shared with journalists in advance so they have time to understand the story and prepare accurate coverage.
But an embargo also creates work for the editor.
The release has to be identified as embargoed, separated from material that can be published immediately, remembered or scheduled correctly, and handled according to your timetable rather than the publication’s. For a busy newsroom, that is another layer of administration and another potential source of error.
Personally, I don’t accept embargoed press releases. If one arrives at Highways.Today, I normally reply and ask the sender to send it again once the embargo has lifted. I simply don’t have the capacity to give individual press releases special treatment within my publishing pile.
Other editors and publications will have different policies, particularly larger newsrooms with forward-planning desks. The important point is not to assume that an embargo automatically makes your announcement more attractive.
In some cases, it can do exactly the opposite.
Before imposing one, ask yourself whether the news genuinely requires advance confidential access or whether you are simply trying to orchestrate a particular publication time.
If an embargo really is necessary, make it impossible to miss. Put it prominently at the top of the email and the press release and give the exact date, time and timezone:
EMBARGOED UNTIL 09:00 BST, 14 SEPTEMBER 2026
Never hide an embargo instruction several paragraphs into an email or inside an attachment.
And wherever possible, find out whether the publication accepts embargoed material before sending it.
An embargo is a restriction you are asking the editor to accommodate, not a badge that makes the story more important.
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Think About Timing
A good story can still arrive at a bad time.
Consider deadlines, major industry events, holidays, weekends and competing announcements.
If your news relates to a trade exhibition, infrastructure announcement or other known event, give editors enough time to work with it.
Relationships help here too. An editor you know may be able to tell you when they need material or whether another timing would work better.
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Give Me a Real Media Contact
Include the name and contact details of somebody who can actually help.
A generic press inbox is fine if somebody monitors it.
What matters is that questions can be answered.
Editors may need clarification, another photograph, a technical specification, confirmation of a name or access to somebody for comment.
Make it obvious whom they should contact.
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Be Available After You Press Send
Don’t distribute a press release and disappear.
If an editor comes back with a question while working on the story, speed matters.
A request at 10:15 for a better photograph may be irrelevant by Thursday afternoon because the article has already been completed without it – or abandoned altogether.
Being responsive is part of being easy to work with.
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Follow Up Without Becoming a Nuisance
A sensible follow-up can be useful. An automated sequence of increasingly insistent emails usually isn’t.
Editors don’t necessarily reply to every press release they receive. Silence doesn’t automatically mean the original email wasn’t seen.
If you follow up, have a reason and keep it short.
And if an editor tells you a story isn’t suitable, accept the answer. A good long-term relationship is worth considerably more than winning an argument over one press release.
Timing, Contacts and Follow-Up
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Say Thank You
If somebody publishes your story, acknowledge it.
It doesn’t require an elaborate message.
A simple thank you helps turn a transaction into a professional relationship.
Better still, share the published article through your company’s channels. That supports the publication as well as extending the reach of your own story.
Media relationships work best when there is value on both sides.
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Don’t Only Contact Editors When You Want Something
Keep useful media contacts informed.
Invite them to relevant exhibitions, demonstrations, factory visits, project openings, briefings and industry events.
If you have useful data or an expert who can explain an emerging issue, mention it.
Not everything needs to be a formal press release.
The aim is to become a useful source of industry information rather than an email address that appears whenever the company wants free publicity.
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Respect Editorial Independence
Once you send a press release to an independent publication, expect it to be edited.
The headline may change. Paragraphs may move. Marketing language may disappear. Quotes may be shortened. Additional context may be added. Other sources may be consulted.
That’s journalism.
A press release provides source material for editorial coverage; it does not buy control over the final article.
If absolute control over every word is essential, what you are looking for is advertising or sponsored content, not independent editorial coverage.
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Use AI to Improve PR, Not Industrialise It
AI can be enormously useful to PR teams.
It can help research publications, analyse previous coverage, identify missing information, improve drafts, summarise technical material, explore angles and prepare better background information.
Use it to make your work better.
The danger is using the same technology simply to send more.
If everybody can generate thousands of personalised-looking approaches, inbox volume rises and the value of each individual message falls.
Use AI to understand an editor better, prepare better material and remove friction.
Don’t use it to automate the human relationship out of public relations.
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Become the Person an Editor Wants to Hear From
This is where all 39 previous tips lead.
Editors remember good contacts.
They remember the PR professional who sends relevant stories rather than everything. The person who provides excellent photographs with the rights and credits sorted. The person whose links work. The person who can find a technical answer. The person who replies quickly. The person who understands the publication and doesn’t waste their time.
When that person’s name appears in the inbox, the email has already cleared the first hurdle.
That reputation isn’t built by one brilliant press release.
It is built through consistency.
In an age when AI can create more content, more emails and more apparent personalisation than the media could ever consume, genuine professional relationships become more valuable.
Don’t aim merely to get your next press release published. Aim to become a trusted source an editor wants to hear from.
The Press Release Test
Before you press Send, look at your email and release from the editor’s side of the desk.
Can they immediately understand what has happened?
Can they see why it matters?
Have you clearly said what you want?
Is the important information near the top?
Are the names, dates, locations, figures and technical details correct?
Have you provided the relevant links?
Are there good high-resolution images?
Do you have permission for those images to be published commercially?
Have you supplied captions and credits?
Is any embargo completely clear?
Can the editor contact somebody quickly if they have a question?
And, above all: Have you made their job easier?
If the answer is yes, you have already given your press release a considerably better chance.
Good PR Is Still About People
Technology will continue to change how press releases are written, distributed, discovered and consumed. AI will become increasingly embedded in communications, search and publishing.
But the fundamental relationship hasn’t changed.
A company has a story.
A PR or marketing professional wants that story told.
An editor decides whether it is useful to their audience.
The companies and PR professionals who understand that relationship — and respect the time, judgement and needs of the people on the other side of the inbox — will continue to stand out.
The tools may change.
Being relevant, reliable and easy to work with never goes out of date.
