As a city editor at the Baylor Lariat, I am in charge of going through all of the press releases we receive daily. Almost every day, I receive a message from someone asking me why I didn't run their press release. Most of the time, the answer to the question is relevance. I release press releases from companies that have NOTHING to do with Baylor, who want us to write an article about them even though our readers wouldn't be interested.
The other big reason is whether the press release is newsworthy. I get press releases all the time about events that occur all the time and don't have any interesting news elements to them.
As a public relations major who works at a newspaper, I spend more time going through press releases than other people might. Here are a few tips I have thought of while reading other press releases that might be useful to you if you would like to pitch something to the newspaper.
1) Make it short--just include the main information. That way people can read it quickly and call you for more interviews.
2) Just like in a news story, put the most interesting information at the top. If you put the newsworthy elements at top, we are more likely to use it.
3) Don't include a lot of quotes- It's just easier to get basic information in the press release and then contact people for quotes. We almost never use quotes we get in press releases so just a few quotes works well.
Those are just a few things I noticed while reading press releases. Hope this helps!
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