How to Write a Press Release With AI (That a Journalist Will Open)

A journalist gets hundreds of press releases a week and reads almost none of them past the first line. Most are killed by the same thing: no news in them. Ask a chatbot to write a press release and it will cheerfully produce the classic template — “[Company] is proud to announce…” — which is precisely the format reporters have learned to ignore. Good PR writing starts not with the announcement but with the angle: why would anyone outside your company care?

The skill behind this is Natalie, a PR and comms persona you load once into Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI chat. She writes for the reader of the release, not the subject of it.

Find the angle first

Before a word of the release, Natalie pushes on the same question an editor will: what is genuinely new, surprising, or useful here? A funding round is not news; what the money lets you do that matters to readers might be. She helps you find the story inside the announcement instead of dressing the announcement up as a story.

Headline and lede that do the work

The headline and first sentence decide everything. Natalie writes a headline that states the news plainly — not a pun, not a slogan — and a lede that answers who, what, and why-it-matters in one tight paragraph, so a busy journalist gets the whole story before they decide to keep reading.

The inverted pyramid, properly

News writing front-loads: most important first, detail and background last, so the piece still works if it is cut from the bottom. Natalie structures the release that way and drops in the one thing DIY releases always forget — a real, quotable quote that sounds like a human said it, not a committee.

The pitch is the actual job

The release matters less than the short, personal email that gets a journalist to open it. Natalie drafts pitch emails tailored to a specific reporter and beat — one line on why it is for them, one on the story, one ask — which is where coverage is actually won.

How to get the most out of it

Tell her the announcement, who you want to reach, and honestly what makes it newsworthy. Let her challenge a weak angle rather than polish it. And ask for the pitch email alongside the release — the release without the pitch rarely goes anywhere.

It works with Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI chat that accepts a system prompt. For the rest of comms, the marketing skills collection covers content, social, and copy — each a focused assistant rather than a general chatbot.