Rethinking our release press releases

[Allan Day <aday gnome org>]

Hi all,

Sri and I are wondering whether we should not do a dedicated press
release for the upcoming 3.18 release [1], and wanted to get some
opinions.

There are a couple of reasons we're thinking of not doing a dedicated
press release:

 1. The main body of the press release repeats information that's in
the announcement news post [eg. 3, 4] and release notes. We do a lot
of rewriting the same information!

 2. We can't remember any journalist ever actually making use of the
third party quotations that we include (please let us know if you can
think of examples!) I'm wondering if it's overkill for an event that
happens every six months...

My personal feeling is that we should frame this discussion around the
question: what do we want to provide journalists with? We can then fit
our various posts around the content. Currently we provide:

 * Written summary of the main features
 * Release video
 * Release notes
 * Screenshots pack
 * Quotes from project members
 * Quotes from third party individuals

Is it reasonable to drop the last item? Is there anything else that
should be on the list?

Thanks,

Allan

[1] Some background: for every release of a new version, we do a press
release. The purpose is to provide journalists with materials to write
articles. It includes some blurb and factual details about the
release, quotations from a couple of people inside the project, and a
couple of quotations from prominent individuals or partner
organisations (you can see a list of who we have quoted in the past
here [2]). It also has a link to the screenshot pack we usually put
together.

[2] https://wiki.gnome.org/Engagement/PressReleases/PressReleaseQuotes

[3] https://www.gnome.org/news/2015/03/gnome-3-16-released-2/

[4] https://www.gnome.org/news/2014/09/gnome-3-14-released/