A press release is a formal written announcement stating that something has happened. Write it so a journalist could publish it unchanged: headline saying what occurred, dateline, an opening paragraph containing every essential fact, supporting detail in descending order of importance, one or two quotes a person would actually say, boilerplate, and contact details. Aim for 400 to 600 words. The most common failure is not bad writing — it is writing one for news that is not news, then expecting distribution to create interest that the announcement itself never earned.
On this page
- The structure
- Five real examples, one per client, one per news type
- How a headline actually gets chosen
- What the five have in common
- The template
- Writing the headline
- Writing quotes people will use
- Length and format
- When to write one — and when not to
- The part most guides leave out
- What a press release is genuinely good for
- How to send it
- Distribution: what it costs and what it buys
- What changed with AI search
- Checklist before you send
- The short version
The structure
1. Headline. What happened, under 100 characters, active voice, no adjectives. Test: would a journalist run it unchanged?
2. Subhead (optional). One sentence, up to 150 characters, adding the second most important fact.
3. Dateline. City and date. AUSTIN, Texas — 2 August 2026 —
4. Lead paragraph. Who, what, when, where and why in the first two sentences. Write it so that if a publication used only this paragraph, nothing essential is missing.
5. Supporting paragraphs. Detail in descending order of importance, so it can be cut from the bottom without losing anything. Two to four paragraphs.
6. Quotes. One or two, from named people with titles. They should sound like speech, not marketing.
7. Boilerplate. A short standing paragraph about the company. Rarely read.
8. Contact. A real name, email and phone that somebody monitors.
9. Ends. ### or -ends- by convention.
Five real examples, one per client, one per news type
These are releases we wrote and distributed. Each is a different kind of announcement, because the hard part is knowing which fact belongs in the first sentence — and that changes completely depending on what you are announcing.
Funding — Brickeye
Brickeye Raises $10M Series B to Scale Construction Risk Mitigation Technology Across North America and Beyond
Toronto-based company has deployed IoT monitoring on 3,000+ projects in 20+ countries, with 150% year-over-year revenue growth
The amount is not the story. The traction is. Every funding headline says a company raised money. The subhead is what separates this one — three checkable numbers in a single line. A reporter deciding whether a $10M round is worth covering is really asking whether the company is real. Answer that before they ask.
Product launch — Tenstorrent
Tenstorrent Unveils TT-QuietBox™ 2, the First RISC-V AI Workstation with a Fully Open-Source Stack to Deliver Teraflop-Class Inference
Liquid-cooled desktop system runs models up to 120B parameters locally with a fully open-source stack, starting at $9,999
A first-in-category claim has to be narrow enough to survive checking. Not "revolutionary AI workstation" but the first RISC-V one, with a fully open-source stack, delivering teraflop-class inference. Every qualifier is load-bearing, which is what makes it defensible rather than marketing.
Put the price in the subhead. Unusual, and correct. It is the first question, so answer it before anyone has to ask.
Company launch — SkipLabs
SkipLabs Launches Skipper: The Runtime for the Era of AI-Generated Software
From the creator of Hack, the language behind Facebook's business logic, comes a closed-loop coding agent that turns one prompt into running software.
When the company is unknown, the credential is the news. Nobody had heard of SkipLabs. Everybody in the audience has heard of Hack. The subhead borrows that recognition and spends it in one line.
This is the most valuable move available to an early-stage company, and most waste it by leading with what the product does.
Executive hire — BuildOps
BuildOps Names Procore Veteran Will Lehrmann as Chief Product Officer
Former Head of Product for Specialty Contractors at the industry's largest construction tech platform joins BuildOps to lead product strategy for commercial trades
Lead with the credential, not the title. "Procore Veteran" is the news. "Names New Chief Product Officer" is not. Executive hires are among the weakest news categories and this is the one move that rescues them.
The first paragraph carries the clause doing the work — he ran product for specialty contractors at Procore, the exact market segment BuildOps was built to serve. That justification belongs in paragraph one, not buried in a quote.
Note what is absent: no sentence about being thrilled to welcome him.
Original research — Sauce Labs
Backed by The Enterprise AI Code Verification Crisis 2026, an independent Wakefield Research study of 400 U.S. executives and engineering leaders. Headline findings: developers now produce 741% more code while release velocity has risen less than 20%; 80% have already traced a production incident to AI-generated code; 65% say their worst quality incident cost $500,000 or more.
Commission the research, then let the finding lead. The story is not that a report exists. It is that 80% of enterprises have already had a production incident caused by AI code — a number nobody else had, and one a reporter can build a piece around without needing anything more from the company.
Pairing research with a product launch is the strongest move on this page. The study establishes the problem independently, with an outside research firm and a stated sample. The product then answers a question the reader has already accepted is real. A launch release on its own asks them to take the problem on faith.
Every headline figure has the same shape: a percentage, a denominator, and a named research partner. That is what makes it quotable.
How a headline actually gets chosen
Headlines do not arrive fully formed. On a co-brand card launch for a fintech client and a retail partner we wrote seven and sorted them into two registers before choosing.
Straightforward
[Retailer] and [Card issuer] Join Forces to Create the [Retailer] Credit Card
[Retailer] and [Card issuer] Announce the New [Retailer] Credit Card
Introducing the [Retailer] Credit Card, Powered by [Card issuer]
Marketing
[Retailer] and [Card issuer] Announce Launch of [Retailer] Credit Card, Elevating Adventure Rewards for Shoppers Everywhere
Elevate Your Exploration: The [Retailer] Credit Card, Powered by [Card issuer]
The [Retailer] Credit Card by [Card issuer]: Redefining Outdoor Rewards
[Card issuer] Collaborates with [Retailer] to Bring the [Retailer] Credit Card to Adventure Seekers
What separates the two groups. The straightforward set states what exists. The marketing set adds a claim about how the reader should feel — elevating, redefining, adventure seekers. Both are legitimate; they are aimed at different places.
How to choose. The register follows the destination, not the preference of whoever is approving it.
- Trade and business press take the straightforward version. A journalist rewriting your headline will strip the adjectives anyway, and giving them something already clean makes it likelier they use your framing rather than inventing their own.
- Owned channels, retail partners and consumer newsletters can take the marketing version, because you control the surrounding context and the audience is already interested.
For a wire release aimed at reporters, "Introducing the [Retailer] Credit Card, Powered by [Card issuer]" is the strongest of the seven: it names both brands, states the product, and contains no word that a subeditor would delete.
Why write seven at all. Because the first headline anybody writes is almost always the marketing one, and it only becomes obviously so when a plainer version sits next to it. The exercise takes ten minutes and it is the highest-leverage ten minutes in the whole document.
One thing to notice about all seven: none of them contains a number. This launch had several available — 3 points per dollar at the retailer, no annual fee, a 15% first-purchase offer. On a consumer card launch the brand names are strong enough to carry the headline. On almost any B2B announcement they would not be, and the number should go in.
What the five have in common
| News type | Where the news actually sits |
|---|---|
| Funding | Traction, not the amount |
| Product launch | A narrow first-in-category claim, and the price |
| Company launch | The founder's credential, borrowed from something known |
| Executive hire | Where they came from, not the title they got |
| Original research | The finding, with its sample size and research partner |
In every one, the first forty words contain a number and no adjectives.
The template
If you want the bare structure to work from:
[What happened, under 100 characters, active voice, no adjectives]
[One sentence adding the second most important fact]
[CITY, State — Date —] [Company], [one-clause description], today [did the thing]. [Second sentence containing the number, the scale, or the change.]
[Supporting paragraph: context, why now, the market condition that makes this matter.]
[Supporting paragraph: detail, mechanics, what happens next and when.]
"[Something a person would actually say, making a claim that could be tested]," said [Full Name], [exact title], [Company].
"[Optional second quote, from a customer, partner or investor — different angle, not a restatement]," said [Full Name], [exact title], [Organisation].
About [Company] [Two or three sentences. Founded, what it does, where it is.]
Media contact [Name, email, phone]
Writing the headline
The most important line and the one most companies write worst.
| Before | After |
|---|---|
| TechCo Is Excited to Announce the Successful Closing of Its Series B | TechCo Raises $40M to Expand Grid Storage Manufacturing |
| InnovateCorp Unveils Revolutionary AI-Powered Platform | InnovateCorp Launches Tool That Cuts Invoice Processing From 6 Days to 4 Hours |
| LeadingCo and PartnerCo Enter Strategic Partnership | PartnerCo Will Run Payments for LeadingCo's 2,000 UK Merchants |
| New Study Reveals Interesting Consumer Insights | 68% of Contractors Discover Margin Loss Only After a Job Closes |
The pattern: remove the adjectives, name the actual change, put the number in.
Writing quotes people will use
Most press release quotes are unusable, because they are written by committee to say nothing objectionable. A quote gets used when it adds something the surrounding text cannot.
Unusable: "We are thrilled to announce this exciting milestone, which represents our continued commitment to innovation and customer success."
Usable: "We were turning down orders because we could not build fast enough. This round is about capacity, not new technology."
The test: could this sentence appear in any other company's release? If yes, rewrite it.
Practical rules. One or two quotes maximum. Full name and exact title. Write it as speech, then read it aloud. If nobody would say it, nobody will quote it.
Length and format
400 to 600 words. Longer is not more thorough, it is less likely to be read.
One idea. If it needs a semicolon in the headline, it is two announcements.
No attachments when sending. Paste it into the email body. An unrequested attachment on a cold email hurts deliverability and often will not be opened.
Write for someone outside your company. Assume no knowledge of your product, category or acronyms.
When to write one — and when not to
Worth writing: funding rounds, acquisitions, senior executive appointments, product launches with a real customer impact, regulatory milestones, research publication, anything with a disclosure obligation.
Not worth writing: partnerships with no described customer impact, minor product updates, award wins, office moves, anniversaries, rebrands, "thought leadership".
The test: could a journalist write a story from this without needing anything else from you? If not, the release is not the problem. The news is.
The part most guides leave out
A press release does not make a journalist care.
Reporters receive hundreds a week and read almost none. Distribution places your announcement into a feed; it does not put it in front of a person with any reason to open it. What produces coverage is somebody emailing a journalist who covers that specific subject, with a reason it matters to them.
Between December 2025 and August 2026, 63% of graded replies to our direct outreach to named journalists were a yes. None of it came from a wire.
"When a reporter does reply, 63% of the time it's a yes. The hard part was never convincing them. It's getting read at all."
Justin Mauldin, Founder, Salient PR
Syndication is not coverage. One release republished across 200 aggregator sites produces 200 URLs and close to zero readers. Counting that as 200 placements is the most common inflation in PR reporting, and it is the reason agency numbers collapse when somebody counts honestly.
A press release is not earned media. You wrote it, you paid to distribute it, and it ran verbatim. That is owned content hosted elsewhere. A journalist choosing to write about you is a different thing and should never be counted alongside it.
What a press release is genuinely good for
Putting facts on the record in a dated, citable form.
Disclosure, where you have an obligation.
Search footprint. A syndicated release creates indexed pages referencing the announcement. Modest, real.
Giving journalists the detail once they are interested. Its best use, and it comes second — after a reporter says yes, the release supplies spellings, numbers and the approved quote in one place.
Forcing internal clarity. Writing one makes a company decide what it is actually announcing. Worth something even if you never distribute it.
How to send it
Paste inline, one recipient at a time, with two or three sentences above it explaining why this particular journalist should care. Subject line says what happened, not that an announcement exists.
"Before anything goes out I check whether the reporter has written about the category in the last 90 days. If they haven't, they come off the list. That one rule kills more pitches than any editing pass."
Lindsey Ranger, Account Lead, Salient PR
One follow-up, and only if it adds something. In our data, two-thirds of all replies came from the first email:
| Sequence step | Delivered | Open rate | Reply rate | Replies |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First email | 2,063 | 47.6% | 6.0% | 124 |
| Follow-up 1 | 1,576 | 37.4% | 3.7% | 59 |
| Follow-up 2 | 69 | 40.6% | 4.3% | 3 |
Distribution: what it costs and what it buys
| Item | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Wire distribution, national | $350–$1,200 |
| Wire with multimedia and targeting | $1,000–$8,000 |
We use a newswire for disclosure-driven announcements, for clients who need something on the record in citable form, and for the search footprint. We do not count republications as coverage and we do not expect a wire to generate reporter interest. Most of the value in that category is sold on the assumption that those are the same thing.
What changed with AI search
One thing worth adapting to. AI systems assembling an answer about a company draw on indexed, dated, citable statements of fact — which is exactly what a well-structured release is. A peer-reviewed study of generative-engine optimisation (KDD 2024) found that adding direct quotations, statistics and cited sources measurably improved how often a page was surfaced in generative answers — by up to 40% on the authors' benchmark, with the size of the effect varying by subject area.
So a release containing a real number and a quotable sentence now has a durable second life it did not have five years ago. A release full of adjectives and boilerplate does not, because there is nothing in it to carry.
That is an argument for writing better releases, not more of them.
Checklist before you send
- Headline under 100 characters, active voice, no adjectives, states what happened?
- Could a journalist run the headline unchanged?
- Does the lead paragraph contain every essential fact?
- Is there a number in it?
- Would a person actually say the quote out loud?
- Is it between 400 and 600 words?
- Could a reporter write a story from this alone?
- Are you sending it inline, individually, to people who cover this subject?
The short version
- Write it so a journalist could publish it unchanged. That is the whole standard.
- Headline states what happened. Remove every adjective. Put the number in.
- Lead paragraph carries every essential fact. Everything after it is cuttable.
- Quotes should sound like speech. If any company could say it, rewrite it.
- 400 to 600 words. One idea.
- A release does not create interest. Direct outreach does: 63% of graded replies positive.
- Syndication is not coverage, and a release is not earned media.
- If a journalist could not write a story from it unaided, the news is the problem.
Salient PR runs earned media programmes for technology companies. All outreach figures come from our own database covering December 2025 to August 2026 and are updated quarterly.
Sources
- Salient PR outreach database, Dec 2025 – Aug 2026
- Aggarwal et al., GEO: Generative Engine Optimization, KDD
If you would rather not write it yourself — Salient PR is a technology PR agency working with technology companies. See how we work or start a conversation.
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How to write a press release journalists can publish unchanged, with five real examples across funding, launches and hires.
