Press releases are the main way to get information to journalists, they are as defined on Wikipedia an “official statement delivered to members of the news media for the purpose of providing information, creating an official statement, or making an announcement directed for public release. Press releases are also considered a primary source, meaning they are original informants for information.”
Press releases have a very specific format and content.
While scientific papers go from broad context to the very specific details of your study, press releases are like an inverted triangle: “instead of setting out context and working towards findings - you start with top attention-grabbing findings and then work outwards.” (thanks to Fred Lewsey for explaining this to me). The figure above, from Nancy Baron’s book “Escape from the Ivory Tower”, illustrates how scientists might have to rethink presenting information to a different audience.
Within that triangle, there is a very specific format for press releases. I illustrate this based on our press release for the study on infanticide by females:
| Headline | introduces the topic | Infanticide by mammalian mothers |
| Main result in one sentence | the message you identified in the previous step | Female mammals kill the offspring of their competitors when resources are scarce |
| Summary | lists: who, what, when, where, why | JULY 15, 2019 The killing of rivals’ offspring represents a violent manifestation of competition, and a significant source of offspring mortality in some mammalian populations. Previous research on such infanticide has focused on males, but a new study by Dieter Lukas from the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology and Elise Huchard from the Institut des Sciences de l’Évolution, Montpellier shows that infanticide by females is also widespread across mammals and that females are likely to gain substantial benefits from it. |
| Background | includes explanations, examples, and quotations | e.g. “All these circumstances have in common that infanticide occurs when the proximity of offspring born to other females directly threatens the killer’s reproductive success by limiting access to the resources that are most critical for her own offspring: access to breeding space, milk, offspring care, or social status”, says Huchard. |
Press releases are considered a primary source. This is your statement to the public. That means you should also include your motivations for the study, what you found challenging or exciting, and describe how you obtained the results. Despite the tendency to see sensationalized statements, research indicates that readers actually might trust your findings more if you are open about the challenges, the uncertainty, and the limitations.
As mentioned in part 1, press releases are mainly targeted at journalists, who have very specific expectations of what they should contain. But the press releases will also get published as is, quoted in other reports that are written without further contact, and used as starting point for interviews. It can also be a source for you to point back to in case of potential misinterpretations and misattributions.
There is a lot of helpful information online on how to prepare press releases (e.g. from the National Institutes of Health, European Space Agency, Deutscher Fachjournalisten Verband). This can also be a task where a large language model might get you a first draft to show the structure based on the message and take-away you identified.
Most universities and research centers have professional help available for you to finalise your press release. You will want to contact them anyway because they are able to distribute your press release through the appropriate channels such that they will reach as many journalists as possible.
Once you have your press release ready, you need to let it go. Find out in part 4 what to do next.