Press Kit

press-kit

You write the document a journalist receives and the kit they pull from — one formatted press release plus the assembled media kit (boilerplate, fact sheet, bios, asset manifest, contact block) laid out so a busy reporter can lift the story without a second email.

The leverage is form, not enthusiasm. 72% of journalists call the press release the single most useful resource a PR team offers, and 79% use releases to generate story ideas (Cision 2025 State of the Media, 3,000+ journalists / 19 markets). The release is not dead — it just gets skipped when it ignores newsroom convention: no dateline, no end marker, a 900-word company history where a 5-W lede should be, no quotable line, no attached asset. Your job is to make the artifact match the form reporters scan, so the story survives the inbox.

You produce: a .md/.txt press release with a header line and ### marker, a ≤100-word boilerplate, a fact sheet, a multimedia manifest with usage notes, exec bios, a press-contact block, and the short pitch email that carries it. You do not source the reporter list, write the brand-voice spec, or wire the send.

Is this news, and which type?

First gate: is this news or an ad? A release earns the form only if a reporter who does not work for you would care. "We updated our pricing page" is not news. "We raised $12M to do X" is. If the answer is no, route the user to ../marketing/SKILL.md for an owned-channel launch post instead — do not dress an ad up as a release.

Then pick the type. The type decides what the lede leads with:

Per-type lede angles, must-include facts, and a worked lede for each (plus crisis) live in references/release-types.md. Read it before drafting an unfamiliar type.

The release skeleton

One page, ~300–500 words, inverted pyramid, 2–4-sentence paragraphs, at least one stakeholder quote. Reporters scan for the markers below; missing them signals an amateur and gets the release skipped.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE          ← header line; or EMBARGOED UNTIL [date time TZ]

Headline That States the News in One Line
Subhead carrying the second-most-important fact

SAN FRANCISCO, CA, June 2, 2026 — [5-W lede: who did what, when, where, why,    ← dateline + lede
in ~40 words. The story must stand alone if the reporter reads only this.]

[Body ¶: the next-most-important detail. Inverted pyramid — most newsworthy
first, background last, so an editor can cut from the bottom.]

"[A quote a reporter can paste verbatim — a claim or insight, not filler],"
said [Name, Title, Company].

[Body ¶: supporting detail, one data point, availability/pricing if relevant.]

About [Company]                ← boilerplate, ≤100 words, evergreen
[One paragraph: what the company does, for whom, the one credibility fact, URL.]

Media Contact                  ← contact block; a real name + email + phone
[Name] · [email] · [phone] · [newsroom URL]

###                            ← end marker (or -30-); signals "release ends here"

Each marker is load-bearing (OhioState/eCampusOntario StratCommWriting). The full fill-in-the-blanks template is in references/templates.md.

Lede + headline

The lede answers the five W's in the first paragraph, ~40 words, so the story is intact if the reporter reads nothing else (Prowly; ereleases). The headline states the news in one line; the subhead carries the second fact. No clever wordplay that hides what happened.

Bad:  Acme Corp, a leader in workflow innovation, is proud to share an exciting
      development that reflects its ongoing commitment to its valued customers.
Good: Acme Corp today launched Relay, a tool that cuts invoice approval from days
      to minutes, available now for teams of any size at acme.com/relay.

The Bad version makes a reporter hunt for the news and find none. The Good version hands them the 5 W's and a verb. Write the Good version first; everything else is body.

The quote that survives

A quote exists to be pasted into the article. Make it a soundbite — a claim, a stake, or an insight — attributed to a real person with a title. Ban "thrilled to announce" / "excited to announce" / "world-class" / "game-changer": they carry zero information and signal PR boilerplate, so reporters cut them.

Bad:  "We are thrilled to announce this game-changing milestone in our journey,"
      said the CEO.
Good: "Approval used to be the slowest step in getting paid. Relay removes it
      entirely — that is the difference between waiting a week and waiting an
      hour," said Dana Ruiz, CEO of Acme Corp.

The Good quote says something only this person would say about this thing. If a quote would work verbatim for any company, delete it and rewrite.

Boilerplate + fact sheet

The boilerplate is the evergreen "About [Company]" paragraph that ends every release — ≤100 words, no adjectives doing the work of facts. Write it once, reuse it. The fact sheet is the skimmable block a reporter copies from:

**Fast facts**
- Founded: 2021 · HQ: San Francisco, CA
- Employees: 48 · Funding: $12M Series A (lead: Northwind Ventures)
- One metric: 4,200 teams; 1.1M invoices processed in 2025
- Site / newsroom: acme.com · acme.com/press

Templates for both are in references/templates.md.

Embargo vs immediate

Default to FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE. Use an embargo only when you are giving named outlets early access to prepare coverage that drops at a set moment. An embargo is a request, not a contract — it holds only when stated unambiguously and sent to reporters who have a reason to honor it. Vague or mass-blasted embargoes get broken (Dynamics of Writing 2024; ereleases).

• Immediate → news is live now, anyone can publish. Use this most of the time.
• Embargo → coordinated drop. Use the exact line, always with a timezone:

EMBARGOED UNTIL 9:00 AM ET, June 9, 2026 — DO NOT PUBLISH BEFORE THIS TIME

Send embargoed releases 1:1 to reporters you have a relationship with, not to a blast list. A list of strangers will break it.