Re: Press releases

["Rajiv Vyas" <r rvyas gmail com>]

> Concerning lenght: The argument is, ehm, misleading. Otherwise, we
> should simply write: "GNOME 2.14 released." and that's it. That's the
> shortest version possible.  ;-)

I agree.  I am a former journalist (non-tech press before) and also
worked in public relations. I think the press release needs to be a
bit longer than couple of paragraph for various reasons, but most
importantly: it gives reporters enough material to understand what
GNOME is and also use some of it for their stories. Otherwise, in this
day and age, just write couple of sentences like "GNOME version XXX
release. For more information visit Website xxxx." Why even bother
writing two paragraphs.

Just to get an idea on how big a press release needs to be, below are
links to press releases on SuSE 10 and MSFT's Windows Service Pack
launch. See the second release to get an idea on the depth they have
gone to explain some of the features. This is despite the fact that
everyone knows about MSFT and even XP. Who seriously knows about GNOME
except geeks or those who use Linux. If we are planning to broaden our
reach, we need to dumb it down a bit and put some more information in
the release.

http://www.novell.com/news/press/item.jsp?contentid=a2e8d2eb89036010VgnVCM1000000100007f____

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2004/aug04/08-06WinXPSP2LaunchPR.mspx




Cheers,

Rajiv