Basic Press Materials and Tips
Fact Sheets: A fact sheet provides a quick summary of your event. It should concisely summarize your event with who, what, where, when, why, and how.
Backgrounders: A backgrounder provides basic background and history of your program, event, section or chapter. Unlike a fact sheet, a backgrounder is not necessarily specific to an event. As background, it can be used to familiarize editors and the media with more general information.
Press releases:
- Tip: be as concise as possible. A one page release is preferred and more likely to be used.
- Contact Information: Provide a name, address, daytime number and email address for the section/chapter contact person in the upper left or right hand corner.
- Headline and “the lead”: Summarize your story in 20 words or less. Think of how you can interest people in your story and let them know what it’s all about. The most important sentence in the release is the first one, or “the lead.”
- First paragraph: Reinforce headline message. Give readers more to whet their appetites. Keep it concise, with all critical information in the first paragraph. The first and second paragraphs should answer the questions Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How.
- Second paragraph: Expand the lead and back it up. Attribute the lead and identify the source (e.g. “…says Mary Smith, Chair, AIChE Local Section.”) Editors will not read past this paragraph if they do not know who is providing the text. This is also an ideal place to add a website address.
- The body: Bring the story to life with your best quote. Humanize the story. This shows editors that your source or expert will be interesting to interview and your story will be interesting to cover. Give more details to flesh out the story in these paragraphs or “the body,” but do it in order of importance, so that the story may be trimmed from the bottom up in order to fit the available space.
- Facts: Facts are important in a news release. Make sure you don’t editorialize. Do no present opinions unless they are those of responsible authorities. Accuracy and integrity are essential. Use direct quotations whenever possible.
- For the media: if you have photos, video or a spokesperson available for interviews, mention it in a note to the editors.
- “The Boilerplate”: The concluding paragraph, which provides basic background information about the section/chapter. This may include scope, size, mission, and basic information about AIChE. Try to limit to 40 words.
When it comes to getting your press release seen online, the rules for writing are very different. Check out these great "SEO" (Search Engine Optimization) tips for more information.