News writing is both a skill and an art. It is best learned, in my opinion, first in a course on News Writing. Then it becomes a matter of practice and more practice, with reviews of your work done by seasoned professionals. These professionals will not fail in making you wince when they hand back your prized first writings. That is the process of learning!

After years of teaching News Writing to university students, I know that within this context I can only introduce you to a few of the basics involved in writing excellent news copy. If you desire to write your own press releases, I encourage you to purchase one of the many books on this subject. Additionally, your bookshelf must include the Associated Press Stylebook.

Writing Style
Anyone who wants to write a press release that will be given any consideration by the media must know how to write news copy properly. Journalists operate under tight deadlines. When you submit copy that needs to be reworked and revised, it can't be handled as quickly as a professionally crafted news story -- unless, of course, the news you have presented is so hot no journalist in his right mind is going to ignore it. Such situations, though, are rare.

The first step in writing news copy is understanding SACE, pronounced "saakee." It means: Simplicity, Accuracy, Conciseness and Emphasis.

• Simplicity -- Always opt for simple words. Rather than abode, choose home; rather than assist, it's help. If there is a simpler word, use it. Next, use simple sentences instead of complex sentences. You know you have a complex sentence if you find it contains several connectives -- and, but, or. Another indicator is length. A quickie test I used in the classroom was to have students read a sentence. If they had to inhale while reading the sentence, it was too long! Keep it one thought to a sentence. And, keep it one thought to a paragraph, too. Paragraphs in news copy are much shorter than those in expository writing. One sentence can be a paragraph. So can two. But when you are approaching three sentences, you are in the danger zone. Avoid writing paragraphs with four sentence!
• Accuracy -- Check your story. Then recheck it. And then check it again. The names must be spelled right. The facts must be accurate. What about the phone numbers, the addresses, the time, the location, the day, the titles? Don't treat this lightly. Always have someone else read your copy before considering it final. A technique that works is to read it backwards -- yes, that's right! Start at the end of the copy and read it word-for-word to the start. This process forces the reader to focus on each word, rather than unconsciously slipping into "reading mode" which results in absorbing many words at one time.
• Conciseness -- Write what you have to say with precision and conciseness. Brevity is the operative word. Look for words in sentences that can be eliminated without damaging the sentence. A good example is the word "that." Rare is the sentence that is ruined when it is deleted.
• Emphasis -- Adjectives are avoided in news copy. To create powerful writing, study your verbs. These action words are the key to strong copy. Consider the sentence: The child ate his food. Now consider an alternative: The child gobbled his food. While admittedly trite, the point is the verb is responsible for creating the visual in the mind. Gobbled is more descriptive than the term, ate. A good test of your writing skills -- and a fun task! -- is to sit down and write copy without one adjective, using only strong verbs. I encourage you to try it.

Associate Press Stylebook
Just as Strunk's or the Chicago Manual of Style are at the left-hand of all expository writers, the AP Manual is the bible for news writers.

The AP Manual is a dictionary of rules for news writers. It provides guidelines that result in news copy consistency. There are rules on numbers, for example. When does one spell out a number; when does one use the number itself? Capitalization has its own set of rules. Take the case of titles. In news writing, a title immediately after a name is set off with commas and not capitalized. A title before a name is capitalized, but only when the title is not separated from the name by a comma. And guess what? You don't use standard postal abbreviations for states in news copy. Thus, for Washington, it's Wash., not WA. With time, the AP rules, of which these are only a few, become second nature.

If you want to appear professional, you must use the AP Stylebook. (Before you forget, order the 1998 Edition for $9.75 right now.)

Is It News?
Probably the biggest reason behind press releases not being picked up is that they aren't news. No matter how excellent your journalistic writing style, a press release will go nowhere if it is not newsworthy.

So what is news? While that subject can open the door to considerable debate, here are some guidelines. News is that which interrupts the status quo. It's fresh. It's recent. It's timely. News is marked by several attributes that can increase or decrease newsworthiness. These attributes are timeliness, proximity, prominence, unusualness and consequence. Study those words carefully. Commit them to memory. You can use them to test the news value, the importance, of your story to the news media.

When writing your story, think about what is important to the audience. If you want to place this story in a New York newspaper, are the readers there going to really care about the election of a new president within your privately held company in Texas that sells a product only to Texans? Why should they? That's where skill comes into play. You will need to look for an angle to make the story newsworthy.

Putting It Together
News stories are written in inverted pyramid style. "Inverted what?" I've heard people chuckle. This means the story is written in descending order of importance. The most important information is at the start of the story. The least important is at the end. You should be able to lop off the last paragraphs, without losing critical information.

The first paragraph, and sometimes the first three paragraphs, is called the "lead." The lead is critical. It should lure a reader into the story. It should prepare them for what is to come. It sets the tone for a story. The lead on a hard news story is quite different from the lead on a feature, or human-interest story. You can identify one from the other from that lead.

I have found myself telling students to spend 30 minutes on writing a great lead and fifteen minutes on the rest of the story. Why? The great thing about news copy is that if you write a good lead, the rest of the story falls quickly into place. Write a bad lead and you'll struggle with every paragraph later.

Beginning news writers should focus on trying to tell the entire news story in the first paragraph, using one sentence. It's not easy. With practice, it becomes less daunting.

Start by dissecting the news. Use the five W's to do this: Who, what, where, when and why or how.

Final Format
There is a customary style for preparing a news release that distinguishes the rookies from the professionals. If you are sending a hard copy, then the text is always double-spaced and only on one side of the page. Unless you have an excellent feature, there is rarely a reason for more than two pages.

On the upper left corner, type "RELEASED: Date. This is the date that you put the story into distribution. There are still many who will instead use "FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE." We stopped using those words a decade ago after attending a media/PR conference. While probably nit-picking, journalists there indicated that one of their many peeves was PR people who submitted releases with this verbiage. They interpreted it as a demand for publication. You never demand the media to use uncontrolled space for coverage.

On the other hand, there are a group of stories that are "embargoed." These stories are released to the media in advance. A good example might be a speech. You are able to write the story prior to the actual talk, from the typed speech. You send it to the media before the talk is given. The embargo is the accepted way to tell the media that this story is to be held until a certain date, after which it can be run. In this situation, we type in the upper left corner the words: Not For Release Until: date

Next, include contact details. We put this information on the right top corner of the page, single-spaced, as follows:

	CONTACT: Cynthia Freyer, 
		 CFNA, Inc.
	PHONE:	 509-332-8665 (8-5 PST)
	EMAIL:   sunni@cfnaonline.com
	FAX:     509-334-2424
	After-hours: 509-332-5555 

It is important to provide many contact numbers for the press. Don't expect that they will only contact you during normal work hours. You should be available to the press any time if you are serious about wanting coverage. Again, because of tight deadlines, if they can't reach you quickly, your story can easily end up roundfiled. They'll move onto the next story, where the source is reached promptly.

After the contact information, put a short, snappy headline on the left side of your page, directly above the start of the copy. Use all caps. Here's an example:

THREE THOUSAND SCIENTISTS TO
MEET IN LA TODAY TO DEBATE FUTURE OF CLONING
STUDIES ON COWS

On the next line, indent and start your story.

When you have finished page one, you need to type -more- as a signal that the story continues to the next page. At the top of the next page, on the upper left corner, type ADD ONE. This signals the first additional page. At the end of page two, type --30-- which is a journalistic code meaning "the end of the story."

This should provide you a good start on writing a professional release. I'd advocate that while you are learning you turn to a good quality newspaper and review their style. Then, practice!