Free press release outline generator for a stronger first draft.

Ardley Timber is a family sawmill in Herefordshire with eleven staff. The announcement: from October their drying kiln runs on their own offcuts instead of bottled gas, the changeover was funded partly by a regional grant, and it comes with four new jobs. That is a real story for a county paper and for a trade title, which is the first thing to establish before writing anything.

The outline that came back: headline, 'Herefordshire sawmill switches kiln from gas to its own waste wood'. Dateline, 'Ross-on-Wye, 14 October 2025'. Opening paragraph, 'Ardley Timber has converted its drying kiln to run on offcuts from its own sawmill floor, ending the site's use of bottled gas and creating four jobs. The system started operating on 6 October and was part funded by a regional growth grant.' Second paragraph, the context: how much waste wood the mill produced and where it went before. Quote from the owner: 'The awkward part was moisture content. Offcuts straight off the saw are too wet to burn cleanly, so we spent a year working out the storage before we ordered anything. Anyone else thinking about it should start there.' Fourth paragraph, what changes for customers, which is nothing, said plainly. Then a three-sentence boilerplate, then ENDS, then a named contact with a mobile answered outside office hours, then notes to editors listing two photographs at print resolution and an offer of a site visit.

It works because an editor could rewrite the whole thing in two hundred words from the first paragraph alone. The headline is nine words, factual, and publishable unchanged. The opening answers who, what, when and why in two sentences. The quote does the one thing a quote is for: it says something the facts cannot, in this case that the difficulty was moisture and storage, which is exactly the detail a trade journalist will build the piece around.

The draft it replaced opened: 'Ardley Timber is thrilled to announce an exciting new chapter in its sustainability journey.' The news, the kiln, the gas, the jobs, appeared in paragraph four. The quote read 'we are delighted to be taking this important step towards a greener future'. That version fails inside fifteen seconds. The headline says nothing checkable, the first sentence contains no information, the quote is a line any organisation could have said about any change, and by the time the actual news arrives the editor has already filed the email as marketing. Same facts, same business, and only one of them is a story arriving ready to run.

The most useful thing a release can do is not exist. If the item is a new website, a rebrand, a routine hire, an office move, an anniversary or a certificate renewal, there is no story, and sending it teaches every recipient that your address is safe to ignore. That damage carries: the next release, the one about something genuinely new, arrives at an inbox already trained to skip it. Ask what a reader outside your industry would gain from knowing, and if the honest answer is nothing, the announcement belongs on your own channels.

Do not draft a release for something not yet certain. Releases fix dates, figures and names in writing, and the correction is far more visible than the original. If the funding is not signed, the site is not open, or the person has not started, write the outline and hold it. Similarly, if the announcement involves people who have not agreed to be named, staff, customers or partners, that consent is the blocking task, not the copy.

For a lot of small businesses the release is also the wrong format for the goal. If what you want is one specific journalist to cover one specific thing, a short personal email describing the story in three sentences, sent to somebody who covers that subject, does more than a formatted document sent widely. Write the release afterwards, as the reference document you paste below the pitch rather than as the pitch itself.

And if the situation is difficult, an incident, a recall, redundancies, a complaint that has become public, do not draft it here. Those need a named accountable person, and usually legal input, deciding exactly what is said and what is left out. Structure is not the hard part in a crisis; the wording is, and a fluent draft in the wrong register makes it worse rather than saving time.

The conventional release runs to one page, roughly 300 to 500 words, in a fixed order because newsrooms read it at speed. A release date or embargo line at the top, so the recipient knows immediately whether they can use it now. A headline, plain and under about ten words. Sometimes a subhead adding the one fact the headline could not hold. A dateline giving place and date, which is where the story is located. The opening paragraph carrying the news in one or two sentences. Supporting paragraphs in descending order of importance, so the piece survives being cut from the bottom, which is how it will be cut.

Then a quote, attributed with a full name and job title. Then a short boilerplate, three sentences on what the organisation is and does, kept identical across releases so it can be lifted. Then ENDS, marking where the story stops and the admin starts. Then contact details: a named person, a direct number that is answered, an email address. Then notes to editors, holding what the story does not need but the journalist might want, images at print resolution, an interview offer, background figures with their source attached.

They read the email subject line first, and it is judged as a headline. Then the first sentence, which decides most of it. Then, if it survives, they are looking for three things: whether the story is genuinely new, whether it is relevant to the people they write for, and whether they can turn it around today. Local desks add a fourth, which is whether there is a place name and somebody local to quote. Trade titles add a different one, which is whether the detail is specific enough to interest people who already know the industry.

What gets a release deleted is rarely bad writing. It is the absence of news, the absence of a picture, arriving too late in the day, or needing three emails to establish a basic fact. What gets it used is being easy: news in the first sentence, a usable quote, a photograph at publication resolution attached or linked, a person who answers the phone. Timing matters more than most people expect. Mid morning, early in the week, avoiding anything competing with a bigger story, and never after a daily title's deadline, at which point the same email sent tomorrow would have been read.

A release is written in the third person for somebody who has to be able to reuse it without rewriting the voice. That rules out most of the habits good marketing copy is built on. No second person address to the reader, no call to action, no invitation to book a call, no adjectives you cannot evidence: leading, innovative, revolutionary, world-class. Everything asserted should be checkable by a person who does not trust you, because that is who is reading it.

The same news usually needs three versions, and writing one and reusing it is why so many releases read oddly on social platforms and so many announcements read stiffly on company blogs. The release gives a journalist the facts in publishable form. The blog post can be first person, can explain the reasoning at length, and can ask the reader to do something. The social post is one specific human sentence about what happened, usually the detail that would have been cut from the release, plus a picture. Write the release first, because it forces you to establish what the verifiable facts actually are, then let the other two be looser.

Fact-check every proper noun, every date, every number and every job title against a source, and get the quote approved in writing by the person whose name is on it. Then build a list of named journalists covering this subject at outlets your customers actually read, which for most small businesses is a handful of people rather than a distribution service. A regional paper's business desk, one or two trade titles, a local radio newsroom, a relevant newsletter writer.

Send it as a personal email, one recipient at a time, with the story in three sentences at the top and the release pasted below your signature rather than attached. Attachments go unopened, and a PDF is actively unhelpful because the text cannot be copied. Link the images rather than sending twenty megabytes. If you are using an embargo, say so on the first line and give a real reason for it. Follow up once, briefly, then stop, because a second chase costs you the contact. Keep the release live on your own newsroom page with the images, since that page becomes the reference a journalist finds later when they are writing about the subject and need somebody to quote.