A press release is written to protect an organization. A story is written to inform someone who does not work there. They can carry identical facts and still be completely different documents, which is why a release so often has to be rebuilt from the ground up before it can run.
Here is the same event, twice.
As a release
We are delighted and proud to announce that, as part of our continued commitment to excellence and our vision of empowering the region, our esteemed organization has successfully commissioned a state-of-the-art new facility, marking a significant milestone in our growth journey and reinforcing our position as a leading player in the sector.
Fifty-four words. Now count what a reader learns: something was built, somewhere, by someone, at some point. Every concrete fact has been replaced by an adjective.
As a story
A garment unit in Ranebennur has added a second stitching line, taking capacity from 400 to 1,100 pieces a day and creating 32 jobs, 26 of them for women from nearby villages. The line began running on 12 September. “We were turning away orders we could not finish,” says Kavita Patil, who runs the unit.
Fifty-three words. A place, two numbers, a date, a named person, and a sentence explaining why any of it happened. Nothing here is more flattering than the release — it is simply checkable.
What changed
| The release said | The story says |
|---|---|
| “State-of-the-art facility” | A second stitching line |
| “Significant milestone” | 400 → 1,100 pieces a day |
| “Empowering the region” | 32 jobs, 26 for women from nearby villages |
| “Continued commitment” | Orders were being turned away |
| Nobody | Kavita Patil, who runs the unit |
| No date | 12 September |
Every row moves in the same direction: a claim about the organization becomes a fact about the world. That is the entire translation.
Four habits to drop
- Superlatives. “Leading”, “premier”, “state-of-the-art” and “world-class” are unverifiable, so an editor deletes them. The space is better spent on a number.
- Burying the event. Releases open with the organization and reach the news in paragraph three. Open with what happened.
- Unattributed enthusiasm. “We are delighted” tells a reader nothing. A quote that explains why the thing happened earns its place.
- Round numbers with no source. “Over 100 beneficiaries” invites the question and answers nothing. Say 104, and say how you counted.
The test
Read your draft and strike every sentence that would still be true if your organization had done nothing this year. If what remains is short, you have a story. If nothing remains, you have a profile update — which is a perfectly good thing to have, and belongs on your organization’s permanent page rather than in the feed.
One more thing worth knowing: you do not need to write it well. You need to write it true and specific. An editor will handle the prose. Nobody can supply your facts for you.
Related
The three things an editor checks before a story can publish — sources, evidence, and why it matters locally.
What an editor needs