Imagine this scene
Your CEO just confirmed a major partnership. The announcement needs to go out tomorrow. You have the facts, a quote, and a deadline — but no first draft yet. This is exactly where AI earns its place in your workflow.
Press releases have a well-established structure: headline, dateline, lead paragraph, supporting detail, boilerplate, contact information. That structure is predictable, and AI is excellent at working within predictable structures. Think of AI as the person who can lay down a complete scaffolding while you focus on making it newsworthy.
Key Insight
AI knows the format of a press release better than most interns. What it doesn’t know is what’s actually worth saying, and to whom.
When you give AI a clear brief for a press release, it can reliably produce: a structurally correct document, a clean headline, a serviceable first draft of the body copy, and even a few alternate leads. What it cannot produce without your input: the editorial judgment that determines the real news angle, the organizational context that separates a routine announcement from a major one, and the relationship knowledge that tells you which reporter actually cares about this story.
The pitch is harder than the release. A pitch has to answer the question every journalist is silently asking: “Why does my audience care about this today?” AI can help you generate multiple pitch angles quickly. Give it the story and ask it to come up with five different angles for different outlet types — trade press, national business media, local news, lifestyle, and tech publications might all want a different version of the same story. Your job is to pick the angle that’s actually right for the outlet, based on context AI doesn’t have.
The quality of your press release is directly proportional to the quality of your brief. Give AI: what happened, why it matters, who it affects, one direct quote from a named spokesperson, and the intended audience for the release. The more specific you are, the less editing you’ll need to do.
✗ Too Vague
“Write a press release about our new partnership.”
✓ Much Better
“Write a press release announcing a three-year partnership between [Company A] and [Company B] to expand [specific capability] in [market]. Target audience is business trade press. Include this quote from our CEO: [quote]. Our boilerplate is: [text].”
Draft a press release and at least two pitch angles for a real or hypothetical announcement using AI.
Pick an announcement — real or fictional. It could be a product launch, a partnership, a leadership appointment, or an award. Write down: what happened, why it matters, who it’s for, and one quote from a spokesperson.
Prompt AI to write a press release using your brief. Ask it to follow standard press release structure: headline, dateline, lead, body (2–3 paragraphs), quote, boilerplate, and contact information.
Review the draft. Mark anything that’s structurally wrong, factually off, or missing your organization’s real context. These are the parts only you can fix.
Now prompt AI to generate five pitch angles for the same story, each aimed at a different outlet type. Read them and identify which one you would actually send to which reporter — and why.
Reflect: How much of the final release would you use as-is? What required editing? This tells you your AI productivity gain on this format.
