A press release is a short, structured announcement that gives journalists, and now AI engines, one piece of news. It runs in a fixed order: headline, dateline, lead, body, boilerplate, contact details and an end mark. Put one specific fact and one number in the first sentence. The Press Release Retrieval Study 2026 found that only 47 of 250 wire releases were cited by an AI engine within 90 days.
This guide covers the standard format, a fill-in template, a finished example, the study data, and a rule for deciding which announcements deserve a wire. Each section answers one question, so jump to the one you need.
What is a press release, and where did it start?
A press release is an official statement that an organization sends to the media to announce news. It is written so an editor can lift facts from it without a follow-up call.
The form is often traced to October 28, 1906. A train run by a Pennsylvania Railroad subsidiary plunged off a drawbridge near Atlantic City, and 53 people died, according to the Museum of Public Relations and Billy Penn. Ivy Lee, a public relations consultant hired by the railroad, persuaded the company to give reporters its own account instead of staying silent. The New York Times printed that statement on October 30, 1906, and it is often considered the first press release.
The lesson from 1906 still holds. A release works when it puts facts in front of the people who write the story before someone else supplies them.
What are the seven parts of a press release?
Every press release has seven parts, and wire services, editors and AI engines all expect them in the same order. The table lists each part with the rule to follow.
| Part | What goes in it | Rule |
|---|---|---|
| Headline | The news in one line | Use present tense, stay under 12 words, and include a number when one exists |
| Dateline | City, state and date | Write the full date so a reader or engine can place the news in time |
| Lead paragraph | Who, what, when, where and why | Answer all five in the first sentence or two |
| Body | Supporting facts and quotes | Rank facts by importance, most important first |
| Boilerplate | A fixed paragraph about the organization | Copy it unchanged from the last release |
| Contact details | Name, title, email and phone | List a person who answers within a day |
| End mark | ### or -30- | Signal that nothing follows |
Skipping a part forces an editor or a model to guess what matters. Keep all seven, in order, every time.
How do you write a press release headline?
A press release headline states the news in one present-tense line of fewer than 12 words and carries a number whenever the story has one. The headline is the first text an editor or an engine reads, so it has to stand on its own.
| Weak headline | Strong headline | Why the second works |
|---|---|---|
| Company Announces Funding Milestone | Company Raises $40 Million Series B | It names the action and the amount |
| Brand Unveils Exciting New Partnership | Brand and Retailer Launch 200-Store Pilot | It names both parties and the scale |
| Firm Marks Important Appointment | Firm Names Dana Lee Chief Financial Officer | It names the person and the role |
All three examples are illustrative. Replace each with your own facts, and drop any adjective that does not change what a reader can verify.
How do you write a lead that gets used?
A strong press release lead states the news and one verifiable number in its first sentence. Compare two openings for the same announcement.
| Weak lead | Strong lead |
|---|---|
| Acme Corp is proud to announce a new chapter of growth as it continues its journey. | Acme Corp raised $40 million in Series C funding led by Example Capital, the company said today. |
The strong version names the company, the action, the amount and the investor. An editor can check each fact, and an engine can attach each fact to a named entity. The Press Release Retrieval Study 2026 measured the effect: releases with a citable number in the first 100 words were cited in 28% of cases, against 9% for releases without one.
Name every person and company the same way each time. Write "Maria Chen, Chief Executive Officer of Acme Corp" in full, and keep the spelling and title identical in every release. A name that changes from release to release splits the evidence across several strings of text.
How should a quote work in a press release?
A press release quote should add a fact, a number or a reason that the headline does not already state. A quote that repeats the headline wastes the most quotable line in the release.
Attribute every quote by full name and exact title. "A spokesperson said" gives a reporter no one to call back and gives an engine no source to cite. "Maria Chen, Chief Executive Officer of Acme Corp, said" works as a citable sentence on its own.
Write quotes the speaker would say aloud. If the executive would never use a phrase in a meeting, cut it from the quote.
What does a press release template look like?
A press release template is a skeleton with one blank for every fact the release needs. Copy it, fill each bracket, and delete any sentence you cannot fill with something specific.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
[Headline: the news, present tense, under 12 words]
[CITY, State], [Month Day, Year] - [Company] today [announced, launched or closed] [specific action], [number], [one clause on why it matters].
"[Quote that adds a fact or a reason]," said [Full Name], [Exact Title] of [Company]. "[Second sentence with a detail or a next step.]"
[Paragraph of supporting facts, most important first. Each sentence should stay true when read alone.]
About [Company]: [Fixed boilerplate paragraph, copied unchanged.]
Media contact: [Full Name], [Title], [Email], [Phone]
###
The boilerplate has its own guide with examples and rewrite tips: read the press release boilerplate guide. If the document you need invites reporters to an event instead of announcing news, use a media advisory, and see media advisory versus press release to choose.
What does a finished press release look like?
A finished press release reads as a set of checkable facts in order of importance. The example below uses a fictional company and fictional people, so every name and number is illustrative.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Harbor Foods Opens 12 Cold-Storage Hubs in Florida
MIAMI, Oct. 7, 2026 - Harbor Foods today opened 12 cold-storage hubs across Florida, cutting delivery time to grocers from 48 hours to 20 hours.
"Grocers told us late deliveries cost them fresh stock, so we built storage close to them," said Ana Ruiz, Chief Operating Officer of Harbor Foods. "Each hub holds up to 400 pallets."
The hubs serve 310 grocery stores in 14 counties. Harbor Foods plans 8 more hubs in Georgia by June 2027.
About Harbor Foods: Harbor Foods is a Miami-based cold-chain logistics company founded in 2014 that delivers fresh and frozen goods to grocers in the Southeast.
Media contact: Sam Ortiz, Communications Director, press@harborfoods.example, 305-555-0100
###
The headline carries a number, the first sentence carries the news and two figures, and the quote explains a reason. The boilerplate makes sense with no other paragraph attached. Each sentence in the body would still be true if a reporter or an engine quoted it alone.
What did the Press Release Retrieval Study 2026 find?
The Press Release Retrieval Study 2026 found that 47 of 250 wire releases, or 19%, were cited by at least one AI engine within 90 days, and the other 203 were never cited. The study drew a stratified random sample from the PR Newswire and Business Wire public feeds for the first quarter of 2026, with 50 releases in each of five types. It tested them against ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews at 30, 60 and 90 days, which produced 15,000 observations.
Everything-PR published the study, and it shares ownership with this site. The retrieval study summary covers the method and results in full, and the complete data, rules and templates are in Everything-PR's Press Release Retrieval Study 2026.
Five factors separated the cited releases from the rest.
| Factor | Cited when present | Cited when absent | Multiplier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Editorial pickup by a top-50 publication | 38% | 6% | About 6x |
| A citable number in the first 100 words | 28% | 9% | About 3x |
| Five or more named entities in the body | 27% | 11% | About 2.5x |
| A regulatory or SEC requirement | 30% | 15% | About 2x |
| Schema-marked boilerplate | 24% | 13% | About 2x |
Editorial pickup mattered most. In 38 of the 47 cited releases, the engine cited a news article about the release and not the wire copy. The wire URL itself was cited in only 9 cases, and 7 of those came from Perplexity. The wire delivers the release to a journalist, and the journalist's article is what the engine cites.
Distribution tier made no measurable difference, so a national wire did not outperform a regional one. The study also reports that embedded images and video made no difference, because the engines it tested could not process them.
Which announcements are worth sending on the wire?
Send a release on the wire only when the news is likely to earn editorial pickup. The citation rate by release type shows where wire spend paid off in the study.
| Release type | Sample | Cited | Rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Merger or acquisition | 50 | 20 | 40% |
| Regulatory or SEC filing | 50 | 15 | 30% |
| Product launch | 50 | 7 | 14% |
| Executive appointment | 50 | 5 | 10% |
| Partnership or award | 50 | 0 | 0% |
None of the 50 partnership and award releases was cited by any engine. Publish those on your own newsroom and pitch them to reporters instead of paying for distribution. To compare distribution options for the releases that do qualify, read how to compare the major wire services, and see Everything-PR's checklist for choosing a press release distribution service.
Citations also arrive early. The study counted 20 cited releases at 30 days, 35 at 60 days and 47 at 90 days, and only 12 new citations appeared in the last 30 days. Check results at 60 days. If a release has not been cited by then, it is unlikely to be.
How do you write one release for journalists and AI engines?
Write one release for both readers, because the same structure serves each. A reporter and an AI engine both want the fact first, the source named and the boilerplate complete on its own.
- Put the number in the headline and the first sentence.
- Attribute every quote by full name and exact title.
- Write the boilerplate so it makes sense with no other paragraph attached, because it is often the only paragraph a model lifts.
- Include a dateline and direct contact details, which mark the release as a primary document.
- Pair every wire release with a pitch to five to ten reporters who cover the topic. The guide to writing a media pitch shows how.
The release and the pitch are two documents for two audiences. The release gives the facts, and the pitch tells one reporter why those facts matter to that reporter's readers.
Can AI draft a press release?
AI can produce a correct first draft of a press release, but it cannot supply the specifics. It has no access to your revenue figure, your executive's actual words or the detail that makes an editor stop reading. Left alone, it fills those gaps with phrases such as "industry-leading" and "excited to announce", and each phrase marks a place where a fact should be.
Draft the skeleton with AI, then replace every placeholder with a real number, a quote from a named executive and a detail a reporter can verify. Have a person check every figure against its source before the release goes out.
Which mistakes weaken a press release?
Six mistakes recur in releases that go unread and uncited.
- Opening with adjectives such as "proud" or "thrilled", which push the fact to the second sentence.
- Changing the company name, product name or executive title from one release to the next.
- Rewriting the boilerplate for variety, which removes the one paragraph that repeats word for word.
- Writing quotes that restate the headline.
- Leaving out the dateline, which removes the date an engine needs to place the news.
- Publishing an AI draft with its placeholders still in place.
How do you check a release before it goes out?
Run this seven-step check on every release before you send it.
- Read the first sentence alone and confirm it names the company, the action and a number.
- Confirm every person and company is named the same way throughout.
- Check each figure against its source document.
- Rewrite every sentence that needs the sentence before it to make sense.
- Confirm each quote adds a fact or a reason.
- Copy the boilerplate unchanged from the last release.
- Confirm the dateline and contact details are present.
Where should you publish a release besides the wire?
Publish every release on your own newsroom page first, because that page is the canonical copy you control. The study's guidance for releases that fail the wire test is the same: use the corporate newsroom plus outreach to reporters.
Add the release to your press room, link it from the executive's own profile page, and send the pitch to reporters on your media list. The guide to building a press room explains how to set up the page, and the media list guide explains how to choose the reporters.
How does the press release fit with the rest of media relations?
The press release is one tool inside a wider media relations program, and it works best beside the others. Pair it with a pitch, a press kit and a current media list.
Use press kit examples to assemble the supporting materials, and read the media relations guide for the full program. For research on how engines weigh releases against other sources, see the press releases versus Wikipedia study. When a release has to respond to a problem and not announce good news, start from the crisis statement templates. Everything-PR's 2026 guide to writing a press release adds the data from 250 releases, and teams that want an agency to write and place releases can review 5W's public relations agency services.
Frequently asked questions
What is the standard press release format?
The standard press release format is a headline, dateline, lead paragraph, body, boilerplate, contact details and an end mark of ### or -30-. Wire services, editors and AI engines all expect that order.
Do press releases still work in the AI era?
Press releases still work for news that earns editorial pickup. In the Press Release Retrieval Study 2026, 40% of merger and acquisition releases and 30% of regulatory releases were cited by an AI engine, against 0% of partnership and award releases.
What is a press release boilerplate?
A press release boilerplate is the fixed paragraph at the end of a release that describes the organization. Keep its wording identical from release to release so every release points to the same description.
Should you write separate releases for journalists and AI engines?
You should write one release, because one structure serves both readers. Lead with the fact, name every source in full, and keep each sentence true when read alone.
How soon will you know if a release worked?
You will know within about 60 days. The study found that citations flattened after day 60, with 35 of the 47 cited releases already cited by then.
Pick your next announcement, test it against the wire table above, and fill the template before you write a single line of body copy.
Originally published March 2015. Updated October 2026.