The press release didn’t die. Its audience changed.
I checked 30 modern newsrooms for “FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE” and none of them print it — because wires take structured fields now, not a formatted blob. Meanwhile answer engines started reading releases and citing them permanently. press-release-writer owns that new discipline: the five-part standard, a hard substantiation bar, and two gates a machine is never allowed to hold.
For anyone who makes real news — a product ships, a client wins, a regulatory milestone lands — and has no repeatable way to turn it into a release a skeptical journalist, or an LLM, will treat as credible. Especially in regulated categories, where the wrong claim is exposure rather than a typo.
opvs-skills install @di-atomic/press-release-writerThen say: “write a press release for this launch” or “we won an award, draft the release”.
Why most releases get binned on sight
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE → a header no wire reads → "10x faster" with no source → "a spokesperson said" → "award-winning" naming no award → "REACH-compliant" (a regulator's word) → 900 words of padding ###
Two dead conventions, an unsourceable number, an unusable quote, a status nobody conferred on you, and a length that signals you do not understand media. Any one of these ends the read.
designation routing metadata, not a line
dateline CITY, Country — date
lead who/what/when/where/why in 2–3
quotes full name + title, approved
numbers each one cites its source
claims "supported the REACH dossier"
length 300–500 words, gated
fields title / summary / content /
categories / country / city
Structured fields mapped to the wire contract, a shape a script checks part by part, and a substantiation bar that deletes what it cannot source.
A number you cannot source is worse than no number — because an answer engine will repeat it for years.
What you actually get
The five-part standard, enforced
Dateline, 5W1H lead, quote sandwich, boilerplate and contact block — each checked by a script, not by vibes. A journalist who cannot find your dateline treats the whole release as amateur.
Every claim carries its source
The instant a claim becomes measurable it needs evidence. “Nation’s largest” fails; “won the Red Dot Award” passes. An unsourceable number gets deleted, never softened — softening keeps the claim and hides the problem.
It cannot break an embargo
A future-dated embargo routes to scheduling and can never reach immediate publish. An embargo break is irreversible, so the path is removed rather than discouraged. It also never writes its own approval.
The two shifts that changed the format
One event, start to published
> "we're launching the new biocide line in DE and FR next Tuesday 09:00 CET"
classify ......... type: product-launch + regulated
designation: EMBARGOED (future-dated)
draft the release
dateline ....... ODESA, Ukraine — 29 July 2026
lead ........... who/what/when/where/why in 2 sentences
quotes ......... named person + title, approved by them
boilerplate .... pulled from the reusable library
contact ........ from the journalist directory
structure ........ 5/5 parts present PASS
substantiation ... 4/4 measurable claims cited PASS
compliance lint .. "supported the CLP dossier" PASS
"fully REACH-compliant" BLOCKED
quote check ...... 0 anonymous quotes PASS
length ........... 412 words (300–500) PASS
prnow fields ..... title 7 words, metaTitle 58c PASS
embargo .......... future-dated + TZ-stamped PASS
gate a HUMAN approves; the skill cannot approve itself
route embargo is future → press_schedule
press_publish is not an available path
If a number cannot be sourced, it does not get softened into a vaguer claim. It gets deleted, and the release ships without it.
How it works
I built this by dogfooding the same stack I run for clients.
press-release-writer is one skill in the system behind Di-Atomic — the marketing & compliance agency that runs cognitoAI, SpiderIQ and OPVS. If you have real news to announce and want it wire-grade, substantiated and safe in regulated categories like REACH and CLP — in any of our seven languages — that’s the day job. Let’s talk.
Book a 30-min call with Di-AtomicJust want the skill? Get @di-atomic/press-release-writer free.