What makes a good press release

The occasion: news first, everything else after

A press release reports on something that has happened or will happen. Its first lines answer what is new and who it matters to. Without that occasion the text is an advertisement — and will be read as one, however much it looks like a press release.

Occasions that carry a release include:

• a new product, a new service or a substantial change to an existing offer,
• an event: opening, trade fair, anniversary, partnership, award,
• a figure that proves something: revenue, study, survey, market share — with its source,
• an appointment or a decision that changes the company.

A quick test: remove the company name. Is there still information someone outside the company would want to know? Then it is news.

The structure: the most important thing first

Journalists and readers decide within seconds whether to keep reading. The proven structure is therefore an inverted pyramid — the news on top, background and detail below, the company at the end.

1. Headline — says in one sentence what happened. Active, concrete, no superlatives. 30 to 90 characters is a good range.
2. Lead paragraph — two to four sentences with place, date and the key answers: who, what, when, where, why. Whoever reads only the lead knows the news.
3. Body — background, figures, context — in short paragraphs, each with one idea. Subheadings help from roughly 2,000 characters on.
4. Quote — a named person with a role says something the text has not already said: an assessment, a reason, an outlook. Not a slogan in quotation marks.
5. About the company — a short, consistent paragraph — founded when, does what, how large, based where.
6. Press contact — name, role, e-mail, phone. A reachable address — follow-up questions are the point.

The language: inform, do not promote

Press language is factual. It describes what is and leaves the judgement to the reader. Four rules that help most texts immediately:

• Use the active voice: "The company opens" rather than "was opened".
• Be concrete: "340 employees at three sites" rather than "a large team".
• Drop the adjectives: "innovative", "unique", "leading" prove nothing. A fact does.
• Give figures a source: whoever cites a study names it; whoever claims a market share says where the number comes from.

How we review

When you release a text for review it does not go online immediately. An automatic content check against our publishing guidelines runs first. The result is one of three levels:

• Green — the release meets the guidelines and is published.
• Yellow — publishable with notes, such as promotional language or figures without a source. It is published; you see the notes in your account.
• Red — the release violates at least one guideline category and does not go online. You receive the category and can revise the text and release it again.

The automatic check runs up to 3 times per release. If the text is still red after that, a person reviews it. They either approve the release or write to you about what is wrong — from then on, a person decides on this release, not the automation. The categories we check against are listed in the publishing guidelines.

A rejected release does not use up your quota. And you can request a human review at any time — informally, from your account.

What we look at for quality

Besides admissibility we assess craftsmanship. This assessment does not decide publication, but it shows you where the text can improve. We look at seven things:

• Press style — informative rather than promotional, active voice, real quotes.
• Structure — a lead paragraph, sensible paragraphs, the essentials on top.
• Readability — sentence lengths you can breathe through; jargon only where needed.
• Completeness — press contact, company information, date, place.
• Sources and evidence — links, studies, data sources for claims.
• Headline — length, clarity, whether it carries the news.
• Originality — a voice of its own rather than interchangeable boilerplate.

These seven dimensions are public — improving on them is real improvement. How they are weighted and where the thresholds lie we do not publish: whoever knew how to scrape through would scrape through.

What to check before releasing

Six questions that expose the most common weaknesses:

• Is the news in the first sentence — or only after three sentences about the company?
• Are place and date given? Does the reader know when and where it happened?
• Does every figure have a source and every quote a name with a role?
• Can every "leading", "innovative", "unique" be replaced by a fact — or cut?
• Is the press contact reachable and the e-mail address spelled correctly?
• Would the text still make sense if it were not on your own website?

Press images

An image raises attention considerably — if it is a press image, not a promotional graphic. Five things must be right:

• Rights — you may publish the image and release it for reuse. People shown have consented. The author is credited.
• AI labelling — whether an image was generated or substantially altered with AI is declared on upload. Photorealistic AI motifs are labelled accordingly — the AI Act requires it, and it protects your credibility.
• Motif — the image shows the subject: the product, the place, the person, the event. Logos, banners and text graphics are not press images.
• Caption — who or what is shown, where and when? One line is enough — without it the image is useless to editors.
• Format — JPG, PNG or WebP, large enough for third-party use; landscape works best in most layouts.

Further reading

• Publishing guidelines — the categories we check against
• Publishing — from draft to release
• Frequently asked questions