News releases: Do we still need them?

This author says yes, because they are an official statement of a company’s position, among other things. Do you agree?

That and Twitter.

Everything an organization, business leader, celebrity, athlete, or political figure has to say about themselves or anything else can be boiled down to 140 characters, right?

Tweets and Facebook posts are now regal declarations—the absolute truth recorded for posterity for people to criticize, repeat, and submit as evidence should anybody doubt what was said.

Where does that leave the humble news release?

Is the news release dead?

Brian Halligan, CEO of Hubspot, asked the larger question, “Is PR dead?” in 2009. In the comments we see a long line of answers (See? Statements recorded for posterity) from people who agreed or disagreed with the premise.

But I’m just talking about the news release. I’ve been seeing a lot of them that seem to have morphed from the traditional news release format (headline, subhead, dateline, subject, quote, quote, company description, contact) into something more like this blog post, cleverly designed to trick people into reading it.

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