So, I finally got round to watching some of the evidence statements given to the Leveson Inquiry into press ethics this weekend.

So wide is the remit of this Inquiry, initiated in the fall out that followed the dramatic eruption of the phone-hacking scandal at the News Of The World last summer, that I fear its findings will either be too detailed or too generic to be of any real use. Either in ensuring that any future evidence of criminal activity on the part of journalists isn’t ignored by the police and hidden by their employers, or in making the press at large a more respectful and respected industry.

But the top line up of celebrities, editors and other interested parties has made for entertaining (if occasionally harrowing) viewing, and kudos to Brian Leveson and his team for putting all that content online for future consumption – there’s several PHDs worth of material on the Leveson site already, and the best way to navigate it is to pick a person you’re interested in hearing from on this list here, and then find the relevant day’s content from this page here.

The Leveson proceedings, of course, have been accompanied by a plethora of commentary from media, political, legal, academic and other circles. So much comment, in fact, it would be almost impossible for me to say anything here that hasn’t already been said ten times before. But, partly to justify how much time I spent watching footage from the Inquiry last weekend, here are the three main issues that come to my mind.

1. Enforcing the law
There’s been a lot of talk about new rules to regulate the press, yet the problem in Hack-gate, surely, wasn’t a lack of rules, but an unwillingness to enforce them. Hacking into voicemail accounts is illegal, and there was plenty of evidence that a number of News Of The World journalists and contractors had either done so, or paid others to do so on their behalf. Yet only two were prosecuted.

I know the second phase of Leveson’s Inquiry will focus on the relationship between the police and the press, but surely the two most important questions stemming from last year’s scandal at the NOTW were this: why did the Metropolitan Police fail to prosecute most of the hackers (budgetary issues, incompetence, political pressure, fear, corruption?), and what can be done if and when companies deliberately cover up the criminal actions of their employees, as it is alleged News International did?

Jumping into the tricky domains of privacy rights and possible state regulation of the press before answering those core questions seems, to me, a case of misguided priorities.

2. Tabloids and superstars
The debate over privacy rights long precedes the Hack-gate explosion, with the press initially on the offensive over what they saw as an abuse by some in the legal profession of the 1998 Human Rights Acts to help rich celebrities and corporations protect secrets it was, some might argue, in the public interest to expose. But now the papers are on the defensive, after a string of celebrities and other members of the public took to Leveson’s stand to recount the horrors of having tabloid hacks invade their lives.

While privacy law is something that does deserve both scrutiny and debate – though probably better away from something as emotive as the Hack-gate scandal – one thing that is rarely mentioned in that discussion is the often-times symbiotic relationship between famous people, the media and brands they work for, and the tabloid and celebrity press. Many of the celebs who have spoken at the Inquiry have disputed the idea that they courted the tabs for coverage at the start of their careers, partly to debunk that common if dubious argument: “the papers made you famous, so now they have a right to make your private life public”.

Now, perhaps those celebs didn’t personally court the tabloids, but if we’re being honest, the PR agencies of the music, movie, TV and publishing companies they worked for, and the brands they took sponsorship from, almost certainly did. Because those PRs know that a small number of tabloid-esque newspapers, magazines, websites and TV shows have access to large portions of the population. Those media are still the biggest generators of hype, and play an important part in helping certain individuals build the sort of public profile that enables them to demand mega-bucks fees oblivious of their artistic talents. Big profile equals big audience equals big fee.

And you only have to look at the sorts of articles that appear in the ‘most read’ lists on tabloid websites to see that it’s reporting on celebrity’s private lives that is ensuring the tabloid media maintain their mass audience appeal in the digital age, which in turn means they are as valuable as ever to anyone charged with the task of building the profile – and fees – of a new singer, actor, athlete, writer, presenter or reality TV wannabe. The private lives of today’s stars are certainly helping the stars of the future.

Does any of that justify newspapers invading the lives of the famous, and splashing private moments, sensitive secrets, twisted truths and bitchy remarks across their pages? Probably not. But it would be disingenuous and unhelpful for the rich and famous to disregard the role the popular press plays in turning talented actors and such like into multi-million pound fee earning superstars. And that’s surely something to consider in the wider debate on the human right of privacy?

3. Everyone’s a media now
My final Leveson point was touched on in this post on the Fleet Street Blues blog earlier this week. There has been a lot of talk of regulating the press. But what does that mean, actually, in an era when everyone is a potential journalist with the theoretical ability to reach millions in minutes? Leveson has taken evidence from some in the social media and blogging domain of course, and this issue is on other agendas. But before too much effort is put into creating an all new press regulator, perhaps some serious thought should be given to what exactly the ‘press’ is?

And here end my Leveson thoughts. For now.

If there’s one thing the interns on the current Taylor Bennett Foundation programme have discovered in their ten weeks of learning, it’s that a lot of people in PR are talking about social media a lot. But they’ve also discovered that across the industry different people are talking about social media in quite different ways.

So, given that they had already heard from some real experts in the field on how they are using social media in their PR work, I thought that when it came to my session with the interns on this subject I’d focus instead on why it is that different PR people are approaching the social media thing in different ways.

The reason for the differences is that social media – that is to say digital tools that make it easier to have a presence, to publish content and to communicate with contacts on the internet – throws up a number of different opportunities and challenges for those involved in managing a company’s communications and public relationships.

Which opportunities and challenges are most important will depend on what kind of companies you are communicating for, what kind of stakeholders you have relationships with, and whether digital channels are at the heart of or on the periphery of your work.

Though even for those PRs whose day-to-day work is far removed from all things digital, some of these threats and opportunities will still be relevant, and ever increasingly so, which is why our TBF interns are finding more and more of the communicators they meet are now talking about social media, and the urgency with which companies need to embrace the opportunities and deal with the challenges, even if a Facebook campaign or daily Twitter chat isn’t relevant.

I group the various social media opportunities and challenges into eight types.

1. Social media as media.
Thanks to social media platforms, anyone can become journalist, editor and publisher, and while blogging has been around for over a decade, never has the blogosphere been so prolific or influential. Meanwhile, via Twitter especially, celebrities have inadvertently become influential commentators. If you’re in the business of online media relations, at what point do you treat bloggers as media? And do you service them in the same way as other online journalists

2. Social media as a channel to journalists.
Even if you’re primarily working with print media, social media, and especially Twitter, are increasingly important. Journalists and editors are, in the main, prolific tweeters, and following and interacted with hacks online is an increasingly good way of building those all important media relationships, as well as keeping up to speed on what reporters, commentators and columnists are focusing on and writing about.

3. Social media as a channel to consumers.
For some brands social media is already a primary channel for talking to customers – with both Twitter and Facebook utlised in this way. This is pretty straight forward if you have a web-savvy consumer base. The challenges, though, are in who should control the Twitter feed and Facebook page – PR, marketing, customer relations? – and what are the rules the employees doing the tweets and Facebook updates should follow?

4. Social media as a channel to other stakeholders.
What other stakeholders can be, or demand to be, communicated to via social media. The political community are increasingly prolific online, though perhaps they see this as a forum for talking to their constituents and not those in public affairs? And what about the investment community? Research suggests this audience is currently less influenced than most by tweets, Facebook alerts and blogs, but is that likely to change?

5. Social media as a consumer recruitment tool.
This is where it gets interesting. Will a social media presence alone recruit new consumers? The realistic answer is “probably not”. But that’s not to say social media can’t be really powerful here. First, for some products and audiences uber-targeted Facebook ads can work, though that’s for your colleagues in advertising. On the PR side, where social media can come into its own is that it can help you encourage and enable your existing customers to become brand ambassadors, giving you more control over that all important word-of-mouth marketing we’ve all spoken about for years. How? Well, that’s a content challenge, not a technical one, and perhaps I’ll return to that topic one day – or you can come on my social media course and I’ll tell you!

6. Social media as a forum for dealing with complaints.
Yes, good use of social media is about listening as well as talking. One more for customer relations than traditional PR perhaps, but some companies are doing great things monitoring complaints being aired on social networks and – where feasible – dealing with those complaints there and then without actually being asked for help by the customer. When it happens, there’s still enough novelty to this kind of customer service that the complainer often immediately becomes a brand ambassador. Though, for big companies with big customer bases, there are clearly resource issues here, especially if customers come to expect automatic and immediate responses whenever they complain online.

7. Social media as a forum for monitoring opinion and response.
Similar to six, though perhaps more relevant to those in corporate comms rather than complaints. Can we use social media to spot trends, to lean about attitudes and opinions to us and our competitors, and to spot potential issues or crises in their early stages? And if so, how can use this information for commercial benefit? And how do we learn to ignore the continuous hum of constant but non-dangerous online hate that big and/or controversial companies and brands will find when they go online, without losing the ability to spot real issues? And what are the ethics of listening in this way? This is probably the area where most is still to be learned.

8. Social media as the enemy.
Another challenge for the corporate comms team. Social media is great in the way it equips companies with powerful, easy-to-use and often free communication tools, enabling them to reach a global audience immediately. But, of course, the same tools are open to everyone, giving pressure groups and single-issue-campaigners a more level playing field when it comes to the tools to speak to large and influential audiences. It’s one of the greatest things about social media, but for companies it can be terrifying. What’s your policy on these groups, do you interact, and if so when and how? Again, lots to be learned, though every time a company goes through a major crisis – and faces a new group of increasingly loud and influential social-media-enabled online critics – we learn some more.

So, lots of food for thought. No wonder so many people are keen to talk to our interns about social media, and no wonder those conversations vary so much!

So, when someone asks you what you do for a living, what do you tell them? Do you work in PR or public relations or publicity or corporate communications or stakeholder relations or reputation management?

All of these terms could be used to describe what is basically a PR job, ie it involves managing relationships between a company and one or more of its stakeholders. And across the PR industry different people and agencies employ different words to describe what they do.

Why is this? Well, partly it’s history. Different parts of the industry developed independently from each other and, by the time people started grouping all these constituent parts together as the “PR industry”, different names for each strand were already established.

But it’s also partly because some strands of the industry just don’t like the term “PR”. Some see PR as being too closely aligned to media relations work, as if the ‘P’ stood for “press”, so if they manage relationships with stakeholders outside the media they feel the PR term is inappropriate.

Others, especially at the more corporate end of the sector, feel “PR” has become too associated with the celebrity, publicity stunt and parties end of the industry, and that it doesn’t represent the work they do briefing analysts, engaging employees, initiating corporate social responsibility programmes or helping CEO’s build a reputation for thought leadership.

So, what terms do these people use instead? Well, it depends on which stakeholders they work with, but often they use the ‘communication’ word, either on its own or as part of the term ‘corporate communications’. Though this leads to everyone outside the industry, and quite a few on the inside, asking “what’s the difference between PR and corporate comms, is the former a branch of the latter, or the latter a branch of the former, or are they different, or are they the same thing?”

Part of me likes the communications word, and I’ve used it myself in the past to describe non-media-focused PR projects I’ve working on. But when PR people describe themselves primarily as communicators it can cause confusion. Because PR professionals are not the only people working in or for a company who are involved in communication – sales, complaints, marketing and advertising are all involved in comms as well, and so are those who manage communication technology. So just calling yourself a communications person is confusing.

Plus, and somewhat ironically, the closer you get to the corporate end of PR – where the comms term is more commonly used – it’s actually less appropriate, because these PR people are often involved in a whole lot more than just communications – they are managing key relationships, influencing a company’s entire operations from the point of view of managing reputation, and responding to events in the wider world, sometimes as decision makers as well as communicators. To be frank, the term public relations – which many of these people shun – is wholly more appropriate for them.

Does it matter, though, if some PR people call themselves ‘PR specialists’, others ‘corporate communicators’, and others still one of the plethora of other terms available? Well, in some ways yes. In my mind the wider PR industry lacks cohesion, and the wider public are confused as to what exactly it is that PR and comms people do. And that can be a problem when trying to recruit the best young talent, when trying to convince a CFO of the ROI of your work, when trying to persuade CEOs of the need for structural changes to meet reputation challenges, and when trying to explain to your Great Aunt Mavis what exactly it is you do for a living.

Given that PR people don’t seem to be able to agree on any of the plethora of terms currently available to describe what they do, how about something totally new? I’m proposing 3R – the new name for the people who help companies manage their relationships, reputation and responses to world events. Nobody else currently uses it, it can’t be confused with another discipline, and it should satisfy all ends of the industry. Yeah, you’re right, it will never catch on. Oh well, perhaps I’ll set up my own PR company and use it for that instead.

I am just back from a month in Edinburgh where I publish ThreeWeeks, the biggest review media at the world’s biggest festival, the Edinburgh Fringe.

Although built on the back of an education programme involving aspiring journalists, and while only operational for four weeks a year, ThreeWeeks is a pretty big media operation, with daily and weekly print publications, an email bulletin and podcast, and a very busy website. Through a partnership with iFringe, our content is also accessible from smartphones.

But it’s the print outputs that are perhaps the most exciting. All my media the other eleven months of the year exist exclusively online, albeit with e-bulletins and podcasts as well as our websites. They enjoy healthy traffic and good reputations but, and perhaps I’m showing my age here, somehow you can’t beat publishing something in print.

You know, something tangible that you can flick through wherever you are, which you can carry around with you in your bag, and which you can see people reading as you walk around the Festival. Seeing real people actually reading your product is somehow much more satisfying that browsing a Google Analytics chart, even though, realistically, you will see, at most, tens of people with a copy of your publication in their hands at any one time, while the Google charts are often showing how tens of thousands of people accessed something you’ve published.

I say I am showing my age by confessing a love for print over online media, but the review team at ThreeWeeks is made up of participants on the aforementioned education programme, and the average age of one of those reviewers is 21, yet most of them are clearly more excited when they see their work in black and white on a piece of paper than on a computer (or iPhone) screen.

The other people who clearly love our printed product are the PR practitioners active at the Festival, and the performers they represent. Some are explicit about this, others imply their feelings, but I’m certain most publicists rate the print coverage we give their clients over any online-only output (not all our content makes it into print, there’s simply too much of it), and presumably that’s because print exposure is what their clients desire too. And even our online-only content benefits from an association with a printed product. We have a lot of online-only competitors at the Edinburgh Fringe, and some of them are very good, but we definitely punch above our weight because we have a print product in our arsenal.

This belief that print coverage is somehow better than online isn’t just an Edinburgh Fringe phenomenon, I see it twelve months a year, not so much as a publisher, but as someone who writes about, teaches and consults on corporate communications. Many PR people, and even more of their clients, still rate print media coverage over any that is exclusively online.

Now, at an event like the Edinburgh Fringe there is possibly some justification for this. While smartphones are slowly changing things, at a big festival people are generally away from their laptops and internet connections, and printed publications therefore have an advantage. When festival-goers are at a loose end between shows and hanging around venue cafes, bars and box offices – which is exactly where we distribute ThreeWeeks – they turn to print media for entertainment and information while they kill time.

But while there will always be exceptions like the Fringe, in many cases newspapers and magazines now have much bigger readerships online than in print. In this edition of esPResso we report on the online readerships of various newspapers and find that even the most conservative of estimates puts the online audience for a title like the Daily Mail slightly above its print readership. More commonly quoted stats estimate the paper’s online readership is four times higher than that of its print outputs. Meanwhile the big online news providers with no print versions, like BBC News and Yahoo!, both enjoy much bigger readerships than most printed newspapers.

And yet I suspect many clients still rate a cutting from a newspaper like the Mail more than a bit of online-only coverage, whether from the Mail Online or another news website. Which is mad when you think about it, in most cases online coverage will be seen by many more people than anything in print.

I’m not saying print media is dead, or should be ignored. It still has an important role to play, and will continue to be part of our Edinburgh Fringe operations for the forseeable future. But, while printed output may give publishers, journalists, PR people and their clients a warm glow inside, in business terms – in mathematical terms – the digital coverage you are getting might just be more important.

So, the News Of The World is no more, following last week’s dramatic events in the News International empire. But, while the phone hacking scandal rumbles on, and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and London’s police force face increased public and political anger, what does the loss of the UK’s biggest Sunday newspaper mean in practical terms?

Of course many expect News International to launch a Sunday edition of The Sun once all the public outrage has died down. Especially now we know NI did indeed register sunonsunday.co.uk last week.

The newspaper company – as with most newspaper publishers – was already looking at ways to more closely integrate the operations of the NOTW with its daily sister title. Running totally separate weekday and Sunday operations is increasingly a luxury media owners cannot afford, and operating separate brands on Sundays doesn’t really make sense in the online domain.

But could a Sunday edition of The Sun just take over where NOTW left off? Some reckon that will depend on how quickly a Sunday Sun can be launched, and that will depend on public mood as much as logistical considerations. And the longer it takes to launch The Sun On Sunday, the harder it will be to take over NOTW’s place in the market.

And then there’s the question as to whether NOTW readers would automatically start buying The Sun On Sunday. The NOTW, although similar in many ways to The Sun, had its own personality, and a slightly different readership profile. Plus, of course, Sunday papers are, across the board, different to the dailies, being more retrospective, more feature heavy, and usually containing more indepth and investigative journalism. A Sunday Sun would not necessarily appeal to all former NOTW readers.

There has been much speculation as to where the defunct tabloid’s readers will go, assuming a Sun On Sunday isn’t an immediate prospect. The Mirror and Mail On Sunday are likely to be the biggest beneficiaries, though some commentators reckon a substantial portion of NOTW readers will just go without a Sunday paper, relying on TV and internet sources for news and gossip instead.

So, what does this mean for PR people? For some, the prospect of a Saturday afternoon phone call telling them their client is the subject of tomorrow’s scoop is reduced, which is nice for them. But, if overall the NOTW’s demise means less people reading Sunday papers, that will only step up the need for media relations people to strengthen their broadcast contacts and social media skills.

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So, super-injunctions have become big news of late, haven’t they, as the costly efforts of footballers and other millionaires to use emerging privacy laws to keep their indiscretions out of the newspapers tumble to the ground?

Whatever your opinion on the privacy rights of the rich and the famous – and clearly such rights should exist to a point – if a celebrity with an affair to hide came to me for advice (not that any ever do!), I’d always err towards a PR solution: let the papers do the big reveal if they want to, do a deal on the story with one of them so at least some journalists are on your side, issue a well crafted statement that shows remorse, fire-fight for 48 hours, plan a programme of repair work, and then get on with your life.

Even if your lawyers successfully persuade a judge to grant you an injunction on privacy grounds, surely there’s always the fear that at some point it’s going to untangle, and then whatever it is you’ve done will look ten times worse. Who wants that preying on the back of their mind?

Of course I write about communications so I’m going to propose a PR rather than a legal solution here. But there’s another thing that interests me about all this, and that’s the phrase the lawyers who specialise in super-injunctions are using to describe their work, ‘reputation management’. As someone who’s always quite liked the idea of PR people, especially at a more strategic level, adopting the title ‘reputation manager’, I am now worried about the reputation of ‘reputation’.

The wider PR industry has always struggled to find a name that everyone is happy with to describe their business and their jobs. You might ask what’s wrong with ‘PR’, but some think ‘public relations’ is too vague, or too associated with parties and boosey lunches with journalists, to properly describe what they do. Some fear ‘PR’ just isn’t taken seriously enough, especially in the board room.

But everyone knows that reputation, while an untangible concept, is very important. What people think of us, and whether they trust us, is incredibly important for a company, or individual, that wants to be successful. Whether you’re looking to raise finance, reduce regulation, recruit and retain the best people, expand into new territories and neighbourhoods, attract more consumers, and ensure you have the benefit of the doubt when things inevitably go awry once in a while, you need a good reputation. And communications people are, in my opinion, the best people to identify what that reputation should be, how it can be achieved, how it should be communicated, and what to do when crises, big or small, threaten it.

Which is why I’ve always been sympathetic to those PR people and corporate communicators who have adopted the ‘reputation management’ term. Some even call themselves reputation managers. It’s taken many years to take off, and some still fear it sounds a little pretentious, but for my money the notion of ‘reputation management’ is something more strategic communicators are right to embrace and promote.

Except, not if the term becomes eternally linked with cheating footballers trying to bully judges into helping them keep their dishonesty out of the papers. So I say to the real reputation managers in the PR industry, fight for your right to use the R word, and give a little thought to how you can ensure the future reputation of reputation management!

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It seems to me that the future of internet advertising – which is basically the future of advertising – is in short video or audio ads that play as you try to access multi-media content on any website, blog or app. Banner advertising remains too easy to ignore (even if you’re not tech-savvy enough to install a banner ad blocker) and while Google adword type advertising will work for some, it’s not the perfect solution, especially for companies looking to do some bombastic brand building.

We are already starting to see this shift. YouTube has subtly started including TV-style ads before some videos, Spotify has almost conditioned us to hearing radio-style advertising on the internet, and most media are now using their audio and video content as prime advertising spots. But while the platforms are now available for these more unavoidable forms of online advertising, are the advertisers ready to use them properly?

I would argue not, given how many 30 second ads taken straight off TV I am now seeing on the internet. 30 second, or even 20 second ads, won’t work on this new broadcast-style online advertising platform. The internet has speeded everything up, and that means the ads need to be faster too.

The reason is simple: most online viewers won’t tolerate a thirty-second ad before what is quite likely a three minute bit of content, especially if, as if often the case on YouTube, you’re not assured as to whether the video clip you eventually get to is [a] what you want and [b] any good. What will likely happen is that viewers will navigate away before the ad has finished, meaning both advertiser and content owner loses out. Or they’ll wait, but resent the advertiser for the intrusion, which isn’t what an advertiser is aiming for when they buy ad space.

But in-video and in-audio internet advertising still offers great opportunities, it’s just that the ad men need to get used to conveying their messages in ten seconds instead of thirty or more. This will require a new approach, but little that is communicated in a sixty second ad these days couldn’t be squeezed down to ten seconds if necessary.

And, of course, with online advertising you have the advantage of being able to offer consumers who are tempted by your ten second message much more information just one click away. And once they’ve clicked, you’ve got much more room to present that information than you would ever have been able to afford in the old days.

But it’s not just those in advertising who need to learn to communicate in fewer words – in a world where everyone is in danger of suffering information overload, companies who want to break though need to learn to say things in a much more concise way. Again safe in the knowledge that, when they engage a stakeholder’s interest, that person can be guided to an online source of information where a company can go into much more detail than ever before.

So, while you are desperately trying to cut that Tweet down to the 140 character word count, think of it as good practice as a communicator. We all need to learn to say more things in less words in the internet age.

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Many won’t admit it, but the marvel that is Wikipedia – ten years old last month – has become one of the most important resources for journalists around the world.

Even reporters at well resourced media who base most of their stories on first-hand research – conversations with insiders, sources and eye-witnesses – will still need some facts, figures, trivia and background information to flesh out their reports. And increasingly that information is gleaned not from carefully edited reference books or in-house data libraries or experts on call, but from that big unedited anyone-can-contribute encyclopedia in the cloud (to use the in vogue term for internet-based services).

And in most cases, Wikipedia will still be the go to place for background information even when a journalist is sitting on a related press release with one of those ‘notes to editors’ sections at bottom which, in theory, is there to provide journalists with background information. Why?

Well, mainly because the background notes on the average press release are often impenetrable. Too frequently I am presented with long paragraphs of complicated sentences providing overly formal descriptions about companies, products and executives, seemingly pulled straight from a sales catalogue or investor report. But I’m not going to buy your product or invest in your company, I just want a few nuggets of trivia to make my news story more interesting.

Of course official notes to editors will have one advantage over a Wiki entry, and that is accuracy. Actually, Wikipedia entries are, in the main, a lot more accurate than you probably think, and the self-editing that goes on in the Wiki community is pretty rigorous (often too much so). But we all know there are errors here and there throughout the Wiki encylopedia.

Plus there is a small community of pranksters who, whenever a person or company or topic becomes newsworthy, like to maliciously plant made-up ‘facts’ into relevant Wiki entries, just to see if any news organisations pick them up and include them in their reports. A good journalist, therefore, knows to use Wikipedia with caution.

But what if media relations people, when writing the notes to editors section of a press release, adopted the style of Wikipedia – a style we know is popular with journalists? Then, as a reporter, I have both accuracy and easy to access and useful information; sorted. But what is it about Wikipedia entries I like? Well, here’s some thoughts for starters:

• Sentences and paragraphs are usually short, adopting a punchy, bullet point style.
• Information is split into clear sections with sub-titles, so it’s easy to focus on the bit you need.
• A one or two sentence summary is always given at the top.
• Key data – dates, people, figures – are presented in a list, also at the top.
• Information is presented in a neutral style – no over the top sales speak or jargon.
• When a list is most appropriate, a list is used.
• Full company or product names are given at the top, but are then abbreviated in the copy.
• Links are given to useful websites and related articles.
• This information is constantly updated.

Of course even with the best notes to editors, a journalist is still likely to take a quick look at relevant Wikipedia entries about your company or client, it’s too good a resource to ignore. But that’s not really the point here. The notes to editors section of press release is more than just a customary add on, it’s an all important resource that is there to make it easier for a journalist to flesh out your announcement into a fuller news story. And everytime you make things easier for a resource-strapped reporter, the more likely he or she is to give you coverage. And take it from me, for your notes to editors to truly work, go take some inspiration from the wonderful Wikipedia.

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