The Classic Press Release Template

Looking for a clas­sic press release template?

This blog art­icle will walk you through the basics of the clas­sic press release tem­plate and some of its history.

Here we go:

The First-Ever Press Release

In 1906, near Gap, Pennsylvania, a ter­rible train acci­dent killed 50+ people.

The acci­dent was a tragedy for every­one involved but poten­tially a dis­aster for the Pennsylvania Railroad. They retained one of the first pub­lic rela­tions agen­cies, Parker & Lee. 

The agency had been foun­ded only a year before the acci­dent in 1905 as the third PR agency in the US.

One of the founders, the legendary PR pro­fes­sion­al Ivy Lee, wanted to help the Pennsylvania Railroad, his first major cli­ent, get the right story out. Hence, Lee cre­ated the first-ever press release. And rather than try­ing to sup­press the story, which would’ve been stand­ard prac­tice then, he invited the press to the acci­dent scene. 

Despite the unfor­tu­nate acci­dent, the Pennsylvania Railroad got good press cov­er­age for man­aging the dis­aster well.

Keeping the press, and by exten­sion, the gen­er­al pub­lic, up to date with an offi­cial state­ment is still some­thing we should strive to do. 

So, how do you write a clas­sic press release?

The Classic Press Release Template

The clas­sic press release format is by no means rock­et sci­ence (even though there are plenty of bad press release habits out there). The secret is not to include sales jar­gon, qual­i­fi­ers, and superlatives.

Download the clas­sic press release tem­plate (zip file con­tains pdf, pages, and docx).

Release Note and Contact Information

You’ve prob­ably seen it, “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE.” It’s a leg­al thing (it shows that this inform­a­tion is inten­ded for dis­tri­bu­tion), and it also works like a place­hold­er in your tem­plate (this is where it says “DRAFT” or “DO NOT DISTRIBUTE” while you’re col­lab­or­at­ing with your col­leagues before releas­ing the inform­a­tion. We can also use it if you send the release to journ­al­ists before­hand, “EMBARGOED UNTIL …”. 

Remember that journ­al­ists can dis­reg­ard your “embar­goed” press release and pub­lish the inform­a­tion imme­di­ately. ¹You could get a journ­al­ist to sign an NDA (non-dis­clos­ure agree­ment), but not all journ­al­ists accept embar­goes. Conversely, the journ­al­ist can nev­er be 100% sure when a PR pro­fes­sion­al prom­ises … Continue read­ing.

Date and Location

You should include the date of send­ing the press release out. It some­times makes sense to add the city from which the press release ori­gin­ates for glob­al wire releases. Both the date and the city are often added right before the intro.

Headline and Summary

The head­line should include the brand name and be descript­ive rather than witty or intel­li­gent. Press release titles can be very long, though. The idea is to give the read­er the full scope of read­ing the title. The title is often bold and more prom­in­ent, but this won’t work for plain-text wire releases. 

Also, press releases in English often have all import­ant words cap­it­al­ised, but this is often con­fus­ing for non-English speak­ers. Writing the head­line in all caps solves both of these problems.

The intro should sum­mar­ise the news hook in 1 – 2 sen­tences. This part is usu­ally the most dif­fi­cult to write; it should include everything in the head­line and add more detail and context.

Focus the head­line and the sum­mary on the under­ly­ing con­flict. Remember the adage, “News is some­thing that someone does­n’t want to see in print.”

Content and Quotes

Their con­tent con­sists of descript­ive para­graphs and quotes. A good rule of thumb is to altern­ate between them. If your first para­graph under the intro is a quote, the next one should be a descript­ive para­graph, then a quote again, and so on. 

Also: If any of your sen­tences are longer than 25 words, con­sider short­en­ing them.

An excel­lent way to start is to answer five basic questions:

Regarding format­ting, you could turn your press release into an inter­act­ive micros­ite with mouse-over effects and pop-up tool­tips. But your press release must work in plain, unformat­ted text for the most crit­ic­al use cases (news aggreg­at­ors, plain-text email send-outs, wire ser­vices like PRNewswire or PRweb etc.). 

Writing quotes often takes some get­ting used to. Here are a few good rules:

Boilerplate and Website Link

Your boil­er­plate should­n’t be cute or cool, just inform­at­ive. Most organ­isa­tions have stand­ard­ised boil­er­plates, but if I can, I will add one that works well with the press release content.

The Hashes

Signal the end of the news item by adding three con­sec­ut­ive hash signs, “###”. Your press release should ideally fit on one page but nev­er be longer than two pages (unformat­ted) — includ­ing all the parts described above.

Download the clas­sic press release tem­plate (zip file con­tains pdf, pages, and docx).