News

Final warning to PDF publicity addicts!

NewsWireless has a boiler-plate letter which we send to publicity executives. We've been sending it out politely enough for the last six years. It says: "We do print press releases if we think they're of interest, and we like to run stories about them... but!"

See today's latest PR story for a demonstration of just how bad the "but!" can be.

The "but" is: there's a limit to the number of hours in the day, and if we ask the Apprentice to spend time turning Adobe Acrobat files into HTML, then it eats into those hours. He's here to learn journalism. Inserting carriage returns and paragraph breaks is a complete waste of his time, and the Editor's time too! - because the Editor has to go and help him.

In order to be worth publishing, a press announcement needs two qualities. First, it has to be interesting. And second, it has to be something we can just stick up.

If the Apprentice has to edit it first, then it becomes a news story. That's fine! but if you want your release to run "as is" then Acrobat PDF files won't do. We think the example shows clearly why...