Use and modification of press releases depending on the type of newspaper

Abstract

The press release is one of the most important tools used by press offices to transmit a story to the mass media. It consists on a short text regarding an organization’s newsworthy story written in the same way as a journalist would write it. The purpose of a press release is to be published by the mass media with the less modification as possible. These documents are used by newspapers to easily fill their pages with news, although they might modify its lines differently depending on the type of daily. In order to prove this hypothesis, all press releases sent in four years to the mass media by the Atapuerca Foundation (Burgos, Spain) have been studied, as well as their impact in six different newspapers. One of the most relevant results is that local newspapers publish more news releases and of any kind of subject, placing them more often in front page than their counterparts. Nevertheless, it has also been noticed some aspects of the press release that doesn’t change much between some newspapers and others, like the size of the information, the degree of reelaboration or the usage of images and their dimensions.