Nobody Reads Your Press Release

Let us be direct about something the public relations industry has been reluctant to say out loud for at least a decade.

The press release, as it is practised by the majority of organisations in Romania and across Central and Southeastern Europe, does not work. Not because the format is inherently flawed, but because what most organisations send to journalists under the heading of a press release is not, by any honest definition, newsworthy.

It is an announcement dressed as news. A commercial message formatted to look like editorial content. A document written for the approval of an internal communications committee rather than for the interest of the person expected to publish it.

And journalists — who receive hundreds of these documents every week, who can identify within the first sentence whether what they are reading is worth their time, and who have the professional experience to distinguish between a story and a corporate communiqué — delete it. Quietly, without response, and without the slightest guilt.

What journalists actually want

Journalism exists to serve the reader — to inform, to challenge, to illuminate something about the world that the reader did not previously understand or had not considered from this angle. A journalist's professional currency is the story that their audience finds worth reading.

Everything they publish is evaluated against that standard — not against the interests of the organisation that sent the press release, not against the importance the CEO places on the announcement, and not against the effort that went into the internal approval process.

What journalists want — what earns coverage, what gets a call returned, what generates the kind of editorial relationship that produces sustained, credible media presence — is a story. Not an announcement. A story.

Newsworthy stories that provoke interest

A story has tension. It has a point of view that is not merely promotional. It connects to something the audience is already thinking about or experiencing. It contains information that the journalist's readers cannot find elsewhere. It gives the journalist something to write that reflects well on their own editorial judgment.

A good story is the product launch that is genuinely changing how an industry operates. The executive appointment that brings a perspective to the market that has not previously been represented is a story. The research finding that contradicts the conventional wisdom about a sector the publication covers is a story. The corporate milestone that demonstrates growth nobody expected in a market that analysts had written off is a story.

A good story is not the quarterly results that met expectations, the office relocation, the new partnership with an organisation the audience has never heard of, the award from an industry body that gives awards to everyone who applies — these are not stories.

They are the background noise of corporate life, and they deserve the fate they receive.

The media relationship that makes the difference

There is a second dimension to this that the press release model consistently misses — and that no volume of distribution can compensate for.

Media relations is, at its core, a relationship discipline. The coverage that matters most — the front page story, the extended feature, the interview that positions the CEO as the authoritative voice on a topic their competitors are also trying to own — does not emerge from a press release sent to a journalist list. It emerges from a relationship in which the journalist trusts the source, values the access, and believes that what they are being offered is genuinely worth their audience's time.

Building that relationship requires something that the press release culture structurally prevents — consistency, selectivity, and the discipline to contact a journalist only when there is something genuinely worth saying.

The organisations that approach media relations as a relationship rather than a distribution exercise do not send fewer press releases because they are less active. They send fewer because they are more selective — and because they have invested in the relationships that make selectivity possible and selectivity, in turn, makes every contact more credible.

In the Romanian media landscape specifically, where the business press is sophisticated, where journalists covering major sectors know their patch with considerable depth, and where the relationship between a credible PR source and a trusted journalist is a genuine professional asset, this distinction is commercially significant.

The organisations whose communications are sought rather than tolerated are those whose media relations are built on relationships rather than on lists.

What Works Instead

The press release is not dead. It is simply no longer sufficient — and for most organisations, it was never the primary tool it was treated as.

What works is a story that a journalist would choose to pursue even if it arrived without a press release attached. An exclusive that gives one publication something its competitors do not have. An expert commentary that arrives at precisely the moment a journalist is covering a topic and needs a credible, articulate, well-positioned voice to add dimension to the piece they are already writing.

What works is the phone call, made by someone who knows the journalist, understands what they are currently working on, and is offering something that genuinely serves their editorial needs rather than the client's communications calendar.

And what works, consistently and over time, is the thought leadership programme that positions an organisation's senior leaders as genuinely valuable sources — people whose point of view is worth seeking, whose expertise is recognised, and whose calls get returned because the journalist on the other end of the line has learned, through experience, that the conversation will be worth having.

None of this is mysterious. All of it requires the discipline to stop sending press releases that nobody reads — and start building the relationships and the stories that earn the coverage the organisation actually deserves.

The journalists who matter are not ignoring your press release. They are reading the first sentence and making an accurate judgment about whether it is worth their time. The question is whether you are giving them a reason to keep reading.

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About the Author

Steve Gardiner (exec MBA) is a senior marketing and commercial leader at Lighthouse PR, bringing global experience from Accenture, Electronic Arts, Virgin Media, Telekom, and Etisalat. Latterly, as VP Business at Etisalat, he was responsible for $1.8B in revenue.

Today, Steve applies his strategic, marketing, and growth expertise to support Lighthouse PR clients as part of the agency’s service offering.

About Lighthouse PR

Lighthouse PR is a leading PR agency in Romania that works with a select number of organisations across Central and Southeastern Europe, delivering media relations, reputation management, crisis communications, social media and an extensive range of marketing services — always led by senior practitioners.

We hold exclusive membership for Romania and the Republic of Moldova in both the Eurocom worldwide PR network and the CCNE, Europe's leading crisis communications network.

Lighthouse PR: Clear. Concise. Convincing.