Make it sound like journalism, not a press release
The lead (the first paragraph of a release) should prove your headline's promise. In the best case, the lead is accurate, brief, clear, colorful and compelling. At its worst, it swamps the reader in confusion, abstraction, jargon, opaqueness and irrelevance.
The number one reason news release leads fail is that the author (or dreaded committee of authors) subconsciously falls into the tedious idiom of press releases, which this gem speaks fluently:
NEW YORK --(RELEASE WIRE)--June 19, 2006—GoodName* Software, Inc., a provider of integrated enabling technologies for financial service providers across North America, announced that BigBucks Bank, Uruba's largest independent bank, is successfully using XCheque, its image-based item processing solution. BigBucks is one of the first financial institutions in Uruba to take advantage of Check ZZ services.
*Real release with proper names changed.
This lead reflexively starts off with the company name. Ponderous company descriptor phrases follow. The "news" is focused inward – "hey, that company bought our stuff." Insular jargon rules: what is an item processing solution, anyway? Is it a Cuisinart? Lawn-mower? Washing machine? In the last sentence, where the reader expects a little context, the company invokes something called Check ZZ services like we've all heard of them before. Although there's probably some real business value in this sale, you'd never know it from what you're reading.
The number one tip for writing strong leads, then, is to reject press release-ese and consciously adopt the idiom of professional journalists, for whom clarity and relevance are the highest aims. That's exactly what one crafty law firm did in the following release:
SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 19 /PRNewswire/ – "I need a kidney, I need help and I can't wait any longer," said a frustrated Kaiser kidney patient Bernard Burks, who was put on a list of patients awaiting a kidney transplant at UC Davis back in 2002. Burks filed a lawsuit against Kaiser Permanente of Oakland, California today alleging that Kaiser's four year delay in providing him the life saving kidney transplant has further increased the chances of his body rejecting any kidney once he is finally able to receive one.
The opening quote plants the hook. A story is under way with real human stakes. The second sentence reels in the jury. The law firm is off and running. The firm doesn't even name itself until paragraph three, but I can assure you their identity comes through. This release reads like a news story and it works.
That same life-or-death announcement would read something like this in press release-ese:
ABC Law Firm, the leading provider of insurance-related legal counsel, today announced that kidney patient John Doe has filed a motion in Springfield Superior Court seeking an award of punitive damages from XYZ Healthcare Corp., one of America's leading integrated health care organizations. Through ABC Law Firm, Doe is alleging that XYZ Healthcare is guilty of misconduct for engaging in policies and practices that caused harm to him and hundreds of other patients.
Long-winded, self-referential, boring and too much work for the reader. Which news release would you rather read?
Writing like a professional journalist means caring about your audience, focusing on what they want to know, going straight to the crux of the matter, speaking in comprehensible terms, and paring away the fodder.
Here are some more lead-writing tips from the writers at Beaupre & Co., all of whom worked as professional journalists in their previous lives:
Use plain English. High-tech is full of gratuitous acronyms, insider jargon and high-falutin' abstractions. It's the shorthand we speak at work and the fancy talk we trot out at business meetings. In a news release, it only obscures your point and minimizes chances for coverage – and, ultimately, sales.
Answer the "so what?" question. In the Kaiser kidney example, the so-what is life or death. In the banking example, something's going on with checks, but no reader can possibly care. The release refuses to answer the so-what question.
Skip the company descriptor phrases. Or at least try to push them down to the second paragraph. And make them concise.
Use active verbs. Verbs power sentences like locomotives power trains. Use strong verbs in their active construction. The batter struck the ball, not The ball was struck by the batter.
Focus on the tension. Every story has tension. Will the wolf eat Little Red Riding Hood? Will Langdon and Sophie find the Holy Grail? What is the compelling business problem at hand? Could it be the exorbitant time and cost involved in manually managing paper checks?
Don't repeat the headline. Your audience just read it.
– Steve McGrath, Sr. Technology Writer
