When you send us your news releases, you access the most immediate and widespread community of executives in the printing and graphic communications industry.

Send all news releases in word format to [email protected].

Press Release Submissions Guidelines

All news for publication should be submitted to [email protected]. Sending news to individual WhatTheyThink team members without including [email protected] risks its exclusion from our daily news sites of WhatTheyThink.com and PrintingNews.com. 

Below are some guidelines to help you maximize the opportunity to be included in the daily WhatTheyThink news feed.

 

DO

• Send press releases, company news, and announcements to [email protected]

• Include press releases as Word document attachments

• Include press releases as text within email

• Follow our formatting and writing guidelines

• Include images

 

DO NOT

• Send news only to WhatTheyThink team members

• Send news as a pdf attachment

• Send only links to web based news

• Send news without a good headline

• Use all caps in headlines

• Use unnecessary text formatting within the document, such as bolding product names

• Use parenthetical stock tickers unless submission is financial in nature

 

News Under Embargo

We are frequently briefed on news items ahead of publication or announcement. This includes product launches, executive appointments, and other major company news. The benefit in sending news under embargo is better overall coverage as we have more time to prepare complementary content related to your announcement.

 

If you submit news under embargo, please be sure to do the following:

• Include an embargo note in both the email subject and body.  Example:   “EMBARGOED until [Date]” and include the date and time this item may be published. 

Links

Feel free to include links to relevant content. We strip out gratuitous links. We ask that you constrain your linking to what is necessary to properly inform and assist our members reading your news. 

Images

We encourage the relevant use of images. Please include within the word document as well as attaching the image file to the email. We specifically encourage head shots of executives when making personnel announcements as well as product images when appropriate.

Format & Writing Guidelines

Good press releases tend to follow a standard format. Doing so not only ensures your PR gets noticed, but also helps us in our work. We recommend the following format for news submissions to WhatTheyThink:

Headline:  A brief attention-grabbing statement summarizing the news.  Avoid using overly braggadocious language and stick with factual, newsworthy statements.  Don’t use all caps - we will change it to title case.

Subhead:  A secondary statement which builds on the headline and further fleshes out the message.

Dateline: The city/country where the news is originating (No date necessary)

Lead Paragraph: The first paragraph of the release which should answer the who, what, when, where and why questions.  

Body:  Additional paragraphs which provide additional supporting content and details. These can include relevant background information, detailed statistics, direct quotes or a call to action. 

Boilerplate: Short paragraph giving information about the issuing company and any mentioned company.

Source: The company or organization issuing the release.

Contact Information: The name, phone number and email address for the PR or media relations contact who can answer any questions about the release.  Including marketing contacts is a plus.

Example

 

WhatTheyThink Publishes Press Release Submission Guidelines

St. Paul, MN - WhatTheyThink, the leading global media organization serving the printing and publishing industries, today announced the publication of a set of guidelines for producing and submitting press releases for publication on WhatTheyThink.com and PrintingNews.com

Printing industry news is happening all the time and WhatTheyThink has been a leader for over twenty years in the aggregation and publication of daily industry news. To date, we’ve published over 100,000 industry news items. 

“We receive between twenty and forty emails each day from various companies and sources featuring press releases about new products, company announcements, executive announcements, and other industry news,” said Eric Vessels, President. “Many of these are formatted differently and contain different types of attachments. In order for us to provide the industry with daily updates in a timely manner, it is important for our workflow that there are some basic standards followed.  This new guidelines document does just that.”

The guidelines are available in a document entitled “Press Release Submission Guidelines” and will be available as a PDF download as well as online at whattheythink.com/about/news.cfm

 

About WhatTheyThink

WhatTheyThink is the global printing industry's leading independent media organization with both print and digital offerings, including WhatTheyThink.com, PrintingNews.com and WhatTheyThink magazine versioned with a Printing News and Wide-Format & Signage edition. Our mission is to provide cogent news and analysis about trends, technologies, operations, and events in all the markets that comprise today’s printing and sign industries including commercial, in-plant, mailing, finishing, sign, display, textile, industrial, finishing, labels, packaging, marketing technology, software and workflow.