A press release is a strange piece of writing. It is meant to inform a busy journalist in 30 seconds, deliver a quotable line they can lift verbatim, and leave them with everything they need to write the story without calling you back. AI can write surprisingly good ones — if your prompt teaches it the format journalists actually read.
Most AI-written press releases fail in the same way: they read like marketing copy with a date stamp on top. Journalists can spot this in two seconds and bin it. A real press release follows the inverted pyramid, opens with the news (not the brand), and provides quotable executive lines that read like a human said them. This tutorial gives you a prompt template that produces releases that journalists will actually read past the first paragraph.
Press releases follow the inverted pyramid — the most important information first, the least important last. The first paragraph (the "lede") must answer the five questions a journalist needs to file the story: Who, What, When, Where, Why. If the journalist reads only the first paragraph, they should still have the entire story.
The second hallmark is quotability. Every release includes one or two executive quotes. The quote must sound like a real human said it — opinionated, specific, and short enough to fit in a news article. "We are excited to announce…" is not a quote. "This is the first time anyone has built this for under £100" is a quote. Journalists lift quotes that sound human.
Think of a release as a structured handover document. You are giving the journalist a half-written article. The less work they have to do to turn your release into a published story, the more likely they are to publish it.
Weak prompt
Write a press release for our new product launch.
The AI will produce a brochure paragraph that opens with the company name, a flowery quote about "excitement", and three paragraphs of feature listing. No journalist will quote it, no editor will run it, and your launch will get the silence it deserves.
Strong press release prompt
Act as a former technology reporter who now works
in B2B PR. Write a press release following the
inverted pyramid format.
News: A Bristol-based startup called "FieldNote"
has raised £4.2M Series A funding to expand its
voice-note transcription tool for field service
engineers. Lead investor: NorthLight Ventures.
Date: 18 November (FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE)
Spokesperson: Priya Shah, CEO of FieldNote.
She is candid, technical, and slightly contrarian.
She does not use marketing language.
Required structure:
1. Headline (≤ 100 characters, news-first, no brand-led).
2. Subhead (one sentence with the most newsworthy
detail not in the headline).
3. Lede (≤ 60 words, answers Who/What/When/Where/Why).
4. Quote 1 from Priya (2 sentences, opinionated and
specific — not "we are excited" language). It
should reference a concrete problem in field
service work.
5. One paragraph of context (the problem the product
solves, written for non-technical readers).
6. Quote 2 from the lead investor (1–2 sentences,
on why they backed the company specifically).
7. Boilerplate paragraph (3 sentences about FieldNote).
8. Contact line: press@fieldnote.example with a
placeholder name.
Hard rules:
- Never use the words "excited", "thrilled",
"delighted", "revolutionary", "game-changing".
- All quotes must sound spoken — contractions OK.
- No statistics unless given (none are given here).
- British English throughout.
The output will read like a release a real journalist would skim and quote. Priya's quote might land as: "Engineers don't have time to type notes between jobs — and the ones they do type are usually wrong by Friday. We built the tool we wished we had on a wet rooftop in February." — concrete, specific, quotable. The investor quote, the boilerplate, and the contact line will arrive in the right shape, ready to send.
Tip: After the release is drafted, ask AI: "Now write a 60-word media pitch to send to a tech reporter alongside the full release." The pitch is what gets the journalist to open the release — and a separate, shorter prompt produces a much sharper pitch than asking for both at once.
Take a recent piece of company news (a hire, a product release, an award). Write a press release prompt using the structure above. Then ask AI for the matching one-paragraph media pitch.
Ask AI to rewrite the executive quote in your draft release in three different personalities: cautious technical leader, charismatic founder, and dry industry veteran. Notice how much the quote alone can shift the perceived story.
Find a published press release online (any company). Paste it into AI and ask:
Critique this release as a senior tech reporter — what would I bin, what would I quote, and what would I follow up on?
This is one of the most useful PR-training prompts you can run.
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