A press release checklist exists for one reason: the mistakes that kill a release are almost never the ones you notice on a second read. You catch the typo in the headline. You miss the embargo time written in the wrong time zone, the quote from an executive who left in March, or the link to a media kit that still needs a login. Editors notice those in seconds, and they do not write back to tell you.
Below are the 21 checks we run on every release before it leaves the building. We call the system the SEND Audit, because it moves through four gates in order: Substance, Edit, Numbers, and Delivery. A release has to clear each gate before it moves to the next. If it fails Substance, there is no point polishing the commas.
Why Most Releases Fail Before Anyone Reads Them
A reporter covering a busy beat might open a few hundred pitches in a week. The decision to keep reading happens in the subject line, the headline, and the first sentence. Everything else in the release is there to support a yes that has already happened, or to answer the follow-up questions a reporter would otherwise have to email you about.
That changes how you should think about review. A writer reads a draft from top to bottom, looking for flow. A reporter reads it as a filter, hunting for a reason to stop. The checklist below is written from the filter’s point of view. Each item is a question with a yes or no answer, and every no is a reason the release dies.
The other reason releases fail is that nobody owns the final pass. The founder approves the quote, the marketing lead approves the copy, and the agency sends it. Three people looked at it and none of them checked the phone number in the media contact block. A checklist fixes that by turning review into a task with an owner rather than a vibe.
A good press release checklist also protects relationships. Reporters remember who sends clean, accurate releases and who sends ones that need three follow-up emails to verify. Over a year, that reputation decides whose emails get opened first.
Gate One: Substance (Checks 1 to 5)
The first five checks ask whether this is news at all. Skip them and you can write a flawless release about something no editor will cover.
Check 1 is the one-sentence test. Can you state the news in a single sentence of fewer than 25 words without using the word “excited”? If you need two sentences or a paragraph of context, the story is not ready, or it is a feature pitch dressed up as a release.
Check 2 asks who outside your company cares. Name a specific reader of a specific publication. “Small business owners in Ohio who read Crain’s Cleveland Business” is an answer. “Our customers” is not.
Check 3 is timing. Why is this news this week instead of three months ago or three months from now? A launch, a filing, a hire, a study result, a deadline, or a tie to something already in the news cycle all count. Internal milestones that nobody outside the company was waiting for usually do not.
Check 4 is proof. Is there at least one fact a reporter could verify without calling you? A public filing, a customer who will go on record, a dataset, a live product page.
Check 5 is the competitor test. If a competitor sent this exact release with their name swapped in, would it still read as news? If yes, you have announced a category, not a company. Find the detail that only you can claim.
Gate Two: Edit (Checks 6 to 12)
Once the story clears the substance gate, the edit gate checks whether the writing does its job.
Check 6: the headline states the news in plain words, under about 12 words, with the company name and the verb that matters. “Acme Opens Second Plant in Toledo, Adding 140 Jobs” works. “Acme Announces Exciting Expansion” does not tell anyone anything.
Check 7: the dateline is present and correct, with city, state abbreviation in AP style, and the release date. Wire services and newsroom systems rely on it.
Check 8: the first sentence answers who, what, and when. The second sentence answers why it matters. A reporter who reads only those two sentences should be able to write a news brief.
Check 9: every quote says something a human would say out loud. Read each one aloud. If it sounds like “We are thrilled to bring innovative solutions to our valued partners,” cut it and replace it with an opinion, a number, or a reason. Reporters lift quotes that carry information, and skip the rest.
Check 10: every person quoted still holds the title listed, and has approved the quote in writing. This is the check that saves you from the most embarrassing correction in PR.
Check 11: jargon has been removed or defined. If an acronym appears, it is spelled out on first use. If a product name is used, the release says what the product does in one plain clause.
Check 12: the release is between 300 and 500 words. Longer releases are not more credible. They are just longer, and the extra paragraphs push the boilerplate and contact details below the point where anyone scrolls.
Can a Reporter Trust Your Numbers? (Checks 13 to 16)
This is the gate where releases lose credibility in ways the sender never learns about.
Check 13: every number has a source in the release or in a linked document. “A 40% increase” should say 40% of what, over what period, measured how. Reporters who cover data for a living will not repeat an unsourced percentage.
Check 14: dates and days of the week match. If the release says an event happens on Thursday, November 12, check a calendar. This error is common enough that some editors use it as a quick credibility screen.
Check 15: every proper noun is spelled exactly as its owner spells it, including capitalization. Partner companies, publications, cities, and people. If you name a partner, that partner’s communications team has approved the mention.
Check 16: claims like “first,” “only,” “leading,” and “largest” are either backed by something you can show or removed. A single unsupported superlative can turn a news story into a reporter’s skepticism about the whole release.
Gate Four: Delivery (Checks 17 to 21)
The last gate covers the mechanics that decide whether the release reaches a person at all.
Check 17: every link works in a logged-out browser window, including the media kit, the product page, and any images. Open each one in a private window. Shared drive links that need permission are the most common failure here.
Check 18: the media contact block names a real person with a direct email and a phone number that someone will answer during the embargo window and the 48 hours after. A general inbox is a signal that nobody is waiting for the call.
Check 19: the boilerplate is current. Headcount, funding, office locations, and customer counts in boilerplate go stale fast, and reporters sometimes copy boilerplate directly into a story.
Check 20: the embargo, if there is one, is stated at the top in a specific time zone, such as “Embargoed until 9:00 a.m. ET, Tuesday, November 10, 2026.” Ambiguous embargoes get broken by accident, and then you lose the reporter who honored it.
Check 21: the send itself. The release is pasted into the email body rather than attached, the subject line matches the headline or improves on it, and every recipient on the list covers this beat. A personalized two-line note above the release, written for that one reporter, beats any amount of formatting.
Three Releases That Fail the Audit
It helps to see how the gates catch real problems. Here are three composite releases, each built from mistakes we see often.
The first announces a new chief revenue officer at a 60-person software company. The headline is clean, the quote is warm, and every link works. It fails Check 2 and Check 5. No reporter outside the company’s own trade niche was waiting for this hire, and a competitor could send the same release with a different name. The fix is not better writing. It is a better angle: tie the hire to a number, such as a plan to open a new market or a revenue target the company is willing to state on the record, and send it only to the two or three trade outlets that cover executive moves in that sector.
The second announces survey results from 1,000 consumers. The finding is interesting and timely. It fails Check 13 and Check 16. The release says “most Americans” without stating who ran the survey, when, how respondents were recruited, or the margin of error, and it calls the study “the first of its kind” without support. Reporters who cover data will skip it. Adding a methodology paragraph and a link to the full results turns the same finding into something they can cite.
The third announces a funding round. It clears Substance and Edit with ease. It fails Check 20. The embargo line reads “Embargoed until Tuesday, 9 a.m.” with no time zone, and a reporter on the West Coast publishes at 9 a.m. Pacific, three hours after a New York outlet that held to Eastern time felt it had the story first. Two reporters are now annoyed, and the company learns that a missing two-letter abbreviation can cost a relationship.
None of these failures shows up on a careful read for flow. Each one shows up the moment someone asks the checklist question out loud.
Run the SEND Audit as a Two-Person Pass
The single most useful change you can make is to split the checklist between two people. The writer runs Substance and Edit, because those gates need someone who knows the story. A second person who did not write the release runs Numbers and Delivery, because those gates need fresh eyes and a willingness to click every link and check every date.
Give the second person the right to stop the send. A release that clears 20 of 21 checks is still a release with a broken phone number or a misspelled partner name, and it will be judged on that. One wrong embargo time is enough to lose a trade publication exclusive that took weeks to set up.
Keep the press release checklist in a shared document and record which checks failed on each release. After ten releases, patterns show up. Some teams always fail Check 9 because executives love formal quotes. Others always fail Check 17 because their media kit lives behind a sign-in. Knowing your weak check tells you where to put the most attention on the next one.
What to Do in the Hour After You Send
The checklist does not end at the send button. In the first hour, confirm the release landed in a test inbox outside your domain, check that any wire version published with the right formatting, and watch the media contact phone. If a reporter calls, the person who answers should have the release, the fact sheet, and the executive’s calendar open.
Then log the send: who received it, which subject line you used, and which outlets responded. That log becomes your best tool for the next release, because it tells you which reporters open, which ones write, and which ones you should stop sending to.
Print the 21 checks, tape them next to whoever sends your releases, and make the next one the first that clears every gate.