An editor receives all kinds of submissions from people desirous of seeing the information in print. Much of it comes from public relations people working on behalf of clients—both corporate and non-profit—who are looking for free publicity, which is all well and good, but sometimes I wonder how these PR people not only got their jobs, but how on earth they keep them.

For instance, press releases are received from firms fully aware of our publishing schedule, yet the facts they want published have expiration dates prior to the date of this publication. Releases about charity events for which tickets are needed, usually include the cost of the tickets, but not always how or where to acquire said tickets. Somebody is getting paid to send out half-assed information, cheating the client and doing the charity no good at all.

Several friends of mine have gone from journalistic pursuits to the world of public relations. My standard line is they’ve gone to the “dark side” but the reality is that PR pays much better than other forms of writing. However, without exception, you can tell in a heartbeat those press releases originating from someone formerly employed in mainstream media. They generally ask for the editor to consider the information for publication. Amateurs say they sure would appreciate some ink. Gag me.

The pros try to keep the superlatives to a minimum. Sure the clients always think their project, restaurant, development, fill in the blank here, is beautiful, deliciously innovative, stunning, fill in your adjective here, but most newspapers will not print it that way. Thus, the pro PR people try to present just the facts. The pros don’t send you copy in all caps with lots of exclamation points and selected text in bold, because they know if a writer or editor has to wade through the entire release making it conform to the publishing standards of the publication, it is likely to end up in the trashcan, while short cogent releases will be printed if space allows. Those PR people who have made a note of how you present information, such as that found in On Stage, often send it already conforming to the format used, making my duties very easy to perform. I love those people.

For the record, I also love my trashcan, located on the right bottom of my computer screen. There was a time when I was too quick to not only drag things to the trash, but equally quick at making items disappear forever. For the last few years, I use the trashcan as a holding container and only run it though the shredder after I am positive I will never need to rescue it. There is enormous and omnipotent satisfaction in taking a badly written press release that is too long by 500 words and dragging the offensive material to the trash.

Space is generally at a premium in any publication. All paid advertisement must go in first, followed by whatever regular features a publication has. So if the editor has two press releases, one coming in at a whopping 1100 words and another at 300 words, guess which one wins? It isn’t always a tossup as I try to balance non-profit releases and for profit releases. We are all in business one way or another but one page of this newspaper can accommodate about 1000 words, plus an ad, so why send out a wordy press release with absolutely no hope of seeing print? To trim down the too long press release into something which can be printed takes time and nobody ever has enough time. Who spends time editing down 1100 words to 300 words when a perfectly good 300-word release is ready to go?

Maybe I could make some extra money by offering a seminar on writing effective press releases, but how would I get the ones who need it most to attend? Besides, I’ve just given out a lot of information for free. Hope the right people are reading it.

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