No surprise: Press releases remain unreadable

Why bad press releases and pitch letters will never go away

It’s a big bad world of mediocrity, son. It’s just the law of nature and there’s nothing you can do about it.

I once had an employee who wrote a letter with numerous mistakes, didn’t show it to anybody, and mailed it, so I made her go to the post office and retrieve it.

Technology has made things so easy to do, that for some people, spending more than a token effort writing a press release or pitch letter can seem daunting.

Most of the newspapers and business magazines delivered to the office went unopened by the staff, until I made it required reading. Every year, I taught a company workshop on writing better press releases and pitch letters, and utilized two publications with best leads: The Wall Street Journal and Advertising Age. In their first paragraphs, you always knew what the story was going to be about, even with a little clever perspective.