March 29th, 2008
Getting the media’s attention
Do you remember when we wrote press releases, printed them, stuffed them into envelopes, and mailed them? Now we write them, format them for the screen, and send them electronically. Write It Well’s new release is posted on PR Web where business editors interested in stories about business communications today will find it.
Electronic dissemination means that we can get the news out much faster. That’s good news. The bad news is that members of the press get a lot more news than they used to. How do we get their attention?
Getting their attention is the cornerstone of our writing skills training programs (books, onsite training, online training): always state your main point clearly at the beginning of the message.
Think about the journalistic triangle (an inverted triangle) which is described in our book, E-Mail: A Write It Well Guide, p. 20. Newspaper editors know that people often scan only the headline and first part of an article. They also know that the final paragraph or two might need to be chopped off to save space. That’s why they answer their readers’ most improtant question right at the beginiing. We need to keep that in mind when we’re writing to editors too.
Keep the journalistic triangle in mind when you write. Putting the most important information first gets the main point across right away and gives readers a context for the details that are coming.
We hope that you’ll read our entire press release but if you stop after the first paragraph, we hope you got the most important message!