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Press Releases Need A Good Story To Tell

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Years ago at a daily newspaper, I often watched the photo editor sort through the pile of press releases on his desk.

On busy days, he would simply throw all of them in the garbage without reading any.

“Sorry folks, we’ve got real news today,” he would say as he dropped the press releases into the trash.

On slow news days, he would look through the press releases and summarize the bad ones as: “Give me some free advertising”, “Help me make more money”, “Help me sell more crap.”

“Don’t these people know we’re a newspaper? Where’s the news?” he would rhetorically ask as he dumped the rejected press releases into the garbage.
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For old time’s sake

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Last week, I photographed a small conference involving a number of mayors, several municipal, provincial and federal government bureaucrats, a few university professors and some company presidents.

As is my routine, I made sure every finished picture had an embedded photo caption which included the name and title of each person in the photo. Fortunately for me, everyone wore a conference name tag which made identification fairly easy.

But several name tags were partially obscured by clothing. No problem! As long as I had a partial name or job title, I could do a Web search to (eventually) find the full information.
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Authentic Photography For Corporate Social Media

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Press junkets are common in the newspaper industry. A junket is a third-party-sponsored event where that third party is looking for some free publicity. For example:

— A car manufacturer will take a group of writers to an exotic location where they can test drive a new vehicle. The car company usually pays all the expenses.

— A travel company will pay for everything when it flies reporters to a tropical destination so they can experience the location and then write about their adventures.

— An entertainment network will fly writers to Hollywood, New York City or the location of a movie shoot so they can meet and interview the actors and director.

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Recycling The Trash

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It’s the early days of an Ontario provincial election and the three political parties are on the campaign trail.

This post could’ve been about Conservatives not having a portrait of its leader. Many of its candidates also don’t have headshots. No portrait = invisible.

This post could’ve been about the NDP which cut-and-pasted its candidate headshots onto a high-school-blue background. The party couldn’t figure out how to organize consistent portraits.

[Edit May 13: The NDP’s first attempt at cut-and-pasting was so bad that it did the cut-and-pasting all over again.]

Instead, I’m going to write about the Ontario NDP recycling its policy book from three years ago and the NDP’s love of being cheap. And yes, I’m going to recycle a blog post :-)
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Are Press Releases Dying Off?

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A journalism site posted an article titled “Has social media finally killed the press release?”

Here’s a truism: if a headline is in the form of a question that can be answered with a yes or no, the answer is no. If the answer was yes, the headline would be in the form of a statement not a question.

Social media makes it fast, easy and free to send information to the masses. But that was never the purpose of a press release.
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Cheap Photographer Strikes Again

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Today I received an e-mail from someone who runs a small clothing store. The subject title of the e-mail was, “I was mislead by a photographer.”

This person had hired a photographer to shoot some advertising pictures for their children’s clothing store.

It appears that the photographer didn’t deliver any usable images or even the promised number of pictures. The photographer also didn’t deliver the promised, model-released pictures of children wearing the store’s clothing. The business has nothing it can use.
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Corporate Photos Are Like Sports Announcers

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Effective photography for corporate marketing has two general types of images: those with story appeal and those that demonstrate something. The former is used to convey an idea or emotion and the latter is used to deliver a fact. The two types can overlap.

Pictures with story appeal are said to have human interest. These images are usually editorial because editorial photography is considered by the public to be more interesting and trustworthy. Conveying a message through human interest is always persuasive because this photography creates an emotional response in the viewer.
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