Solution Finder for Send2Press Press Release Services : PR Writing and Targeted Distribution since 1983

Minimum Content Requirements

All press releases must contain certain standard elements for the media to consider it a news announcement and not an "advertorial," or an unsolicited article; and for it to be compatible with various electronic news syndication systems. We also tend to follow what is called "AP style" (AP = Associated Press).

Example Press Releases
Click one of the following links to download/view an example "properly formatted" 400 word press release, with one image link (logo). Your release must follow this format to avoid delay.

PLAIN TEXT (Note: line breaks added for readability)

MS WORD (.doc Microsoft Word format)

RICH TEXT (.rtf format, for any word processor)

Walk Through of Each Section of Properly Formatted Release
Specifically, the required and minimum contents of a release include:

The headline: the main title of your news announcement, typically no more than 20 words (over 20 words and some systems like Google News may "skip" the story entirely!). A sub-headline is optional, no more than two sentences, and is discouraged as many online systems will skip this content, which we suggest should be in the proper body of the release instead.
The first paragraph, which begins with the dateline based on your physical locale, or event locale, (e.g. LOS ANGELES, Calif. - Jan. 2, 2009), and which summarizes what you're announcing as news, and which must include "attribution" (your name, or company name).

What is attribution? Attribution is the same thing as the "source" of the news being announced. An agency representing a client is not the source, the organization announcing something is the source, and must be mentioned in the text of the first paragraph. So, what this means is that in the first paragraph you MUST include the source of the news to make it clear WHO is announcing the news. The most common example would be "Company XYZ announced today their blah blah...." And another is "A new line of rubber baby biscuits was announced today by Company XYZ...." This is called "attribution" and is required by ALL legitimate newswire services.

What is the dateline? The dateline identifies where the news originates, and the date the release is being issued. We do not allow past-dated releases and will always correct any release dateline to the "actual" date it is released to the media and online wire networks. You should always use your "real" locale if looking to garner local media interest. For national news, you might shift dateline to nearest major metro area. For instance, we are located in Redondo Beach / Torrance in Los Angeles County; so, sometimes we use Torrance, Calif., and sometimes we use Los Angeles, Calif., for our own company news. You cannot use mis-leading datelines: so, if you're in Quebec, Canada, use that for your dateline — don't arbitrarily put New York, N.Y., as that is neither accurate nor honest.

The body of your release which can include specifications for a product, information about a book, background of a new management hire, etcetera. URLs should be fully formed as www.mysite.com/pagename, and NOT as anchor links.
Media contact information: which is a contact person by name, the company or agency the person is with, a valid phone number, and e-mail address. You may specify on our News Information Form whether the media contact info will be publicly visible, or "for media only," which is the most common usage.

Optional elements:

With optional free or paid photo add-on options, each image link counts as five words, and the required photo caption counts in length. Each image (except a corporate logo) must have a caption (short description of what the image shows). If no caption is provided, we will create one (you will not get prior approval if we have to create a missing caption).
Optional true note to editors: you may include an optional note intended only for editors, that doesn't appear in the public body of release. This can be notes like a link to a media-only press page, link to print-ready image(s), or similar.

Generally, 350-700 words is the "optimum" length for a modern press release. Detailed biographies, white papers, how-to animations, or the like should all be located on a website, and linked to in the release for interested media. Sub-headlines (a second headline) are no longer recommended as they get dropped by many online news systems, don't appear in Google News or RSS summary formats, and if they contain important information should be included in text of first paragraph.

Press releases push to the media as "plain text" format, not HTML, and cannot contain columns or special formatting, bolds, italics, underlines, or similar. Images do not appear in media copies, only links to the image (see "Photos" section, below, this page). Anchor links are supported, in moderation.

Important Notice About Google News and Headlines

Please be aware that Google News has problems in "capturing" stories which have headlines longer than 20 words (tip: if you use long multi-syllable words, use fewer of them, perhaps 15 words maximum), and may skip the story entirely. This is outside our control. If you have a long headline we will be happy to push as provided, but please do not be surprised if it doesn't appear in Google News. This limitation is also noted in Google's own help information for their news portal. This does NOT impact the main Google.com search in any way.

Similarly, use of sub-heads (a secondary headline) is not recommended as many online news systems and sites ignore them entirely, so anything important in a sub-head won't be seen at all. We do not support more than one sub-headline and it should not be longer than 20 words either. Anything important should be in the first and second paragraph, not "stacked" above the dateline.

Additionally, Google News' robot has a problem scraping stories shorter than five paragraphs (i.e., under 300 words in length). This is often an issue with event announcements, media alerts, or very short press releases of two paragraphs and some bullet points. Google's news bot seems to be unable to differentiate a short "article" or "story" from a summary page that leads to the full story, and will presume a short news page is a summary and not the "actual" story. We have seen this issue common with releases under 300 words, and/or which have only two paragraphs and then bullets or stacked news items. This is outside our control if Google News skips your story due to length. This issue does NOT impact the main Google search, social networks, or clipping services, only the Google News site.

File Formats We Accept for News Projects

PROPER FILE NAMES: before submitting any file(s) using our form system you should ensure that your filename has no spaces (ie., "my file name.doc"), does not have multiple periods or extensions (ie., "myfile.rev1.doc"), and has no special characters (ie., "myfile[rev]*.doc"). Incorrect naming may interfere with uploading the file on our News Information Form. If the upload fails, due to poor naming of your file, you can always e-mail to us.

GOOD: myfilename7-rev21.doc
GOOD: my_muppetz_filename_rev21.doc

BAD: my file [7].version23*.doc
BAD: my 'muppetz' file is really a long one.doc

PRESS RELEASE FILE FORMATS: We currently accept the following file formats for press release content: MS Word (.doc), Rich Text Format (.rtf), plain text (.txt). We do not accept faxes, or PDF files for release submission, either for distribution or for editing/re-write.

• NOTE: Office 2007/8 ".docx" format files must be e-mailed after form submission, as they are not yet compatible with our old form system due to the way Windows uploads files to non-Windows web servers (ours run on Linux). It won't upload properly to our server.

IMAGE FILE FORMATS: We currently accept almost any file format, such as .jpg, .jpeg, .tif, .eps, .pdf, .psd, .bmp, .png and the like. Color reduced files, such as .gif format, are not recommended. With logo images, vector files such as .eps should have fonts converted to outlines, and Photoshop files should have fonts rasterized. We cannot use images "inside" of MS Word files, Flash animations, or similar.

Two Levels of Distribution Service Plans

STANDARD Press Release Distribution Plans:
Neotrope/Send2Press Newswire "STANDARD" Level Press Release News Distribution Plans (formerly called "Silver" level plans) include Send2Press Direct-to-Editors™ targeted distribution to U.S. media via e-mail, RSS, clipping services (e.g., CyberAlert, eWatch, etc.), aggregators (Factiva/DowJones, Pluck/Blogburst, HTMedia/Asia, LexisNexis, ProQuest, etc.), and automatic re-publication on sites in the Neotrope News Network (CaliforniaNewswire, eNewsChannels, etc.); plus hand placement to social networks (e.g., Digg, Delicious, Yahoo! Buzz, etc).

All plans include one free Web-resolution photo (or logo), and our proven SEO+PR™ optimization online, to ensure your story can be found in search portals. Basic PRTrax™ reader reporting dashboard helps track reader metrics for your stories. Standard National PLUS plan adds hand-revision of your story for maximum SEO.

BASE WORD LENGTH LIMIT: the base word length limit for our "Standard" plans is 800 words. There is an upcharge of $20 for every 400 words over 800 (covers time to proof and format). Order the "Standard Plan Length Overage" add-on option, as needed.
EXTENDED Press Release Distribution Plans:
Neotrope/Send2Press Newswire "EXTENDED" Level Press Release News Distribution Plans (formerly called "Blue" level plans) extend our Standard level distribution plans (noted above) with additional custom U.S. national distribution via PRNewswire® and Thomson-Reuters.

BASE WORD LENGTH LIMIT: the base word length limit for our "Extended" plans is 400-475 words. If your release is over 475 words, you must order one (1) of the 100-words add-on option for Extended Plans for each 100 words or fraction over 400 words. Example: if your release is 565 words long, it counts as 600, with is 200 words over the base limit; so you would have to order two (2) of the 100-words add-on option.

Online Posting Subscription Plans:

NEW! Starting Oct. 2009, we have also added a new service level, which is our "Online Posting Subscription" plans. These plans come in two flavors where you can either subscribe per month, and post up to XX number of stories in our system; or, an annual subscription fee, with a modest per-story review/approval fee. The net cost works out to be about $20-25 per story, and is ideal for small book/music publishers, associations, non-profits, and PR pros (such as PRSA members) who want to provide an additional option for online dissemination of news content.

These plans require that you log-in to our CMS (content management system) to post your stories, and you must make them "clean" prior to posting (fit our format, remove double spaces; and special characters like ™ must be converted to either (TM) or ™ in the text; anchor links must add the target="_blank" tag, etc.). Stories are approved within 24-48 hours, during normal business hours. Photos must be provided as 200x200 pixels, no larger than 9kb. Absolute maximum word length is 800 words, all inclusive. More information is available in our updated pricing information pages on the main area of our site.

Service Plan Name and Order Code

All Send2Press services have both a name, such as "Standard National LITE", as well as an order code (often called a SKU), such as SD-NLITE. Generally, all STANDARD plans will start with a code of SD-AAAAA, and EXTENDED plans will have a code of EX-AAAAA. Optional add-ons to service plans (such as photos, word length, etc.) will usually start with OP-AAAAA, and writing plans will start with WR-AAAAA.

Starting Oct. 2009, we have also added a new service level, which is our "Online Posting Subscription" plans, and these will have a service code of OS-AAAAA.

Service Pricing Explanation

TWO TYPES OF NEWSWIRE SERVICE OPTIONS:

Targeted News Distribution — with this kind of service plan, Send2Press will disseminate your news directly to editors in the media at print, broadcast and online venues (depending on plan level). This is our classic newswire offering, which we have provided to our clients for more than 25 years.
Online Only Subscription Posting — with this kind of plan (new starting Oct. 2009), you pay either a montly or annual subscription fee with log-in to our system to post your stories for our online-only network.

The pricing for each targeted news distribution and/or writing service plan is shown in our pricing charts, and in the Plan Comparison Chart, and are shown in U.S. funds (we are a U.S. company, located in Los Angeles County, California). This price is what we charge for each news announcement you wish us to disseminate. This is not a subscription, annual fee, membership, or price for software. We are a newswire service which distributes news directly to editors at targeted media who cover the content found in your news release. (Note: Starting in October 2009, we have added specialty online posting subscription plans which can be found in the pricing charts to learn more.)

DISTRIBUTION PLAN EXAMPLE: You issue a press release in June about hiring a new CFO, and you choose one of our distribution plans. You would pay the fee shown for us to distribute that specific "CFO" press release. If you do another press release in September, announcing a new version of your WackyWidget software, then you would again choose a plan and pay the fee for that plan, for the new "WackyWidget" press release announcement. Basically, you pay a plan fee each time you send out a news announcement, since each new release is considered a unique project. A single release goes out once, it is not resent over and over (a press release is not an advertisement).

ONLINE POSTING SUBSCRIPTION PLAN EXAMPLE: With a monthly plan, you might post a story for one client on January 2nd, another client on January 5th, the first client again on January 30th; and all of these would be covered by the monthly plan fee (there is no rollover for unused posting allotments). With the annual subscription plan, the annual fee covers set-up and a brief training session; then you pay a simple review/posting fee for each story you post which covers our staff's time to check your work before it is made live.

NOTE: Press release writing and revision is not included with the distribution plans, other than a quick tune-up of normal typos and formatting. Our professional Press Release Writing or draft revision services are optional "add-ons" which can be ordered at same time as any distribution plan. See the yellow/gold tab "Press Release Writing" at top of our main site pages, for detailed service information and examples.

Payment Methods Accepted

We currently accept American Express, VISA, MasterCard, and Discover for services. We do not offer open-account billing, we do not accept checks or money orders, and we only accept wire transfers when ordering ten (10) or more distribution plans at once (minimum $1,000). We also, optionally, accept PayPal for payment from your bank account or eCheck (see our Order Center for information). (Note: PayPal eChecks take 3-5 days to clear before we will be able to provide services.)

We have no annual membership fee or contracts for our distribution plans or writing. (Note: Starting in October 2009, we have added specialty online posting subscription plans which can be found in the pricing charts to learn more.) You "pay as you go," when you need something. All services are ordered online using any major credit card (we don't accept gift cards or fillable debit cards as they won't pass address verification), in our Secure Order Center. We do not offer open account billing or credit terms. See the yellow/gold "Order" tab with shopping cart on it, found at top of all our main site pages, to visit our order system. All services are offered and provided subject to our Terms of Service (TOS).

Using Another Person's Credit Card

Because of credit card rules for "card not present" transactions, if you place an order and use another person's credit card (such as company partner card, spouse's card, client's card, etc.), you will be required to have the card holder (person whose name appears on the actual card face) fax us a signed authorization form along with the card holder's personal e-mail account (for copy of receipts). This simple form requires the signature of the card holder, and security code from card, and authorizes you by name to use their card for a purchase with Neotrope/Send2press. (Note: If you are unable to fax the form, you can "scan" it using a scanner, then email us a PDF or JPG of the scanned document.)

Click Here for Fax Authorization Form (PDF)

This requirement is for both the protection of us and the card holder from fraud. Orders with another person's card will be HELD until the form is filled out, signed, and faxed to us. The signature must not be forged. You only need to fax the form once per calendar year per card and card holder. So, if you place an order in February and then again in April, you do not need to send another fax form in April.

AGENCIES: For agencies or representatives, you should order using your own credit card, then bill your client for services. If you use a client's card, BOTH you and your client are agreeing to abide by our service terms and conditions (TOS), which are agreed to during the checkout process, related to non-refundable credit card purchases. Additionally, legally, your client would then become our client since they would be making a legal contract with us to provide services, and you must set-up an account for them to use their card in our system.

All credit card statements will show a charge from "NEOTROPE" and not from "Send2Press." International orders (outside of U.S./Canada) may NOT use a third-party credit card.

IMPORTANT NOTE! We MUST have a signed document for third party card usa prior to release being issued; we cannot accept an unverified e-mail or phone call authorization, as this does not properly confirm the actual card holder has authorized the use of the card.

All International Orders Using a Credit Card

IMPORTANT: If your country and/or credit card provider does not support AVS (Address Verification System) for credit cards, you will be required to FAX a photo copy of the front and back of your card, clearly showing name of card holder, number, expiration and security code; and send a signed authorization form. We will NOT ACCEPT any international order unless this FAX is provided. Currently all VISA and MasterCard, and AMEX cards issued in the U.S., and most in Canada and the United Kingdom, support AVS. International orders (outside of U.S./Canada/U.K.) may NOT use a third-party credit card.

IF YOU ARE UNWILLING TO PROVIDE A COPY OF YOUR CARD YOU MAY NOT ORDER OUR SERVICES USING AN INTERNATIONAL CREDIT CARD.

International customers must FAX us this authorization form along with a clear photocopy of BOTH the front and back of the physical credit card. If you don't have a physical credit card, you cannot order our services.

Click Here for Fax Authorization Form (PDF)

Understanding Word Length of Press Releases

Each press release distribution plan has what is called a "base word length limit," which is the number of words found in your press release when using the "word count" feature in your word processor such as MS Word, OpenOffice.org, etc. (see the Help in your word processor software for how to do this). Releases must be submitted in a word processor format like MS Word, RTF, or plain text. We do not accept PDF (because they introduce hard returns at end of each line), Publisher, Quark, HTML, MS Works, faxes, tif/jpg, or similar formats for press releases. (See example files, below, in this section.)

PREFERRED FORMAT FOR RELEASE SUBMISSION IS MS WORD .DOC FILE FORMAT. (You should be able to do a "save-as" from ANY word processor to this format, or to rich-text, .rtf format.)

Generally, all STANDARD Level Distribution plans (formerly "Silver" plans) have a base word length limit of 800 words, which is a fairly long release, and the EXTENDED Level Distribution plans (formerly "Blue" plans) have a base word length limit of 400-475 words (counting everything in the release, see information understanding word length above, this page). If your release is longer than this in word length, then you will have to add-on an over-limit fee for each 100 words with EXTENDED Plans, or each 400 words (or fraction) over with STANDARD Plans. With our new (as of Oct. 2009) "Online Only Subscription Posting" plans, the maximum length is fixed at 800 words.

The reason the EXTENDED Plans have a shorter length limit is due to the additional newswire systems your news is disseminated through, and their base length is shorter than that of Send2Press. Technically, the STANDARD Plans have no word length, but the added fee for "over long" releases is to cover additional time to proof and properly format the typical press release.

Important: All the required elements of a modern, properly formatted, press release count in the overall word length. You should remove any headers, footers, or similar letterhead elements from any press release submitted (for instance, a website address found in a graphic will not appear in the text when removed).

Specifically, this includes:

The headline: the main title of your news announcement, typically no more than 20 words (over 20 words and some systems like Google News may "skip" the story entirely; Yahoo Buzz!, Digg, and others often truncate headlines after 16-18 words).
The first paragraph, which begins with the dateline (e.g. LOS ANGELES, Calif., Jan. 2, 2009), and which summarizes what you're announcing as news, and which must include "attribution" (your name, or company name). Attribution is the same thing as the "source" of the news being announced. An agency representing a client is not the source, the organization announcing something is the source, and must be mentioned in the text of the first paragraph.
The body of your release which can include specifications for a product, information about a book, background of a new management hire, etcetera.
Media contact information: which is a contact person by name, the company or agency the person is with, a valid phone number, and e-mail address.
With optional free or paid photo add-on options, each image link counts as five words, and the required photo caption counts in length. Each image (except a corporate logo) must have a caption (short description of what the image shows). If no caption is provided, we will create one (you will not get prior approval if we have to create a missing caption).
Optional true note to editors: you may include an optional note intended only for editors, that doesn't appear in the public body of release. This can be notes like a link to a media-only press page, link to print-ready image(s), or similar.

Generally, 350-700 words is the "optimum" length for a modern press release. Detailed biographies, white papers, how-to animations, or the like should all be located on a website, and linked to in the release for interested media. Sub-headlines (a second headline) are no longer recommended as they get dropped by many online news systems, don't appear in Google News or RSS summary formats, and if they contain important information should be included in text of first paragraph.

Press releases push to the media as "plain text" format, not HTML, and cannot contain columns or special formatting, anchor links, bolds, italics, underlines, or similar. Images do not appear in media copies, only links to the image.

SEE IMPORTANT NOTICE IN THE "REQUIREMENTS" SECTION AT TOP OF THIS HELP SECTION, REGARDING LONG HEADLINES, SUB-HEADLINES, AND GOOGLE NEWS SKIPPING STORIES.

Example Press Release:
Click one of the following links to download/view an example "properly formatted" 400 word press release, with one image link (logo). Your release must follow this format (see our topic at top of this page, "requirements," for more information).

PLAIN TEXT (Note: line breaks added for readability)

MS WORD (.doc Microsoft Word format)

RICH TEXT (.rtf format, for any word processor).

Targeted Direct-to-Editors™ Distribution to U.S. State Media

All Send2Press press release distribution plans include our Direct-to-Editors™ dissemination to U.S. daily news media. Specifically, "daily media" includes newspapers, television news rooms, and news/talk radio stations. Weekly media is included, as applicable, since it is usually locale specific (meaning a local weekly newspaper in Manhattan Beach has no interest in news originating from Atlanta).

When reviewing the price list or Plan Comparison Chart, you will clearly see the primary difference between our "State," "4-States," and "National" plans has to do with how widely your news is disseminated to in-state "daily" media sources. All news is highly targeted where possible, meaning we would send book news to the book editor at the Washington Post and not the automotive editor (unless, of course, it was a book about cars).

Examples: If you order a "State" plan, your news would only be sent to the in-state media within the U.S. state where you're located, or where an event may be located (e.g. "California"). If you order a "4-States" plan, you can specify any four U.S. states (such as NY, NJ, CT, or NY, CA, IL, etc., or "metro" area, such as Los Angeles, NYC, Miami, and Dallas). If you wish to reach media in all U.S. states, you must choose a "National" level plan (currently available plans may vary).

IMPORTANT NOTE: You specify targeting such as desired state, region, or similar information on our News Information Form, after checkout is completed in our secure Order Center, and NOT during the order/payment process.

Local/City Distribution: If you wish to target only a major city ("metro circuit"), such as "Los Angeles," or "Miami," or a portion of a state, such as "South Florida," you would choose our "State" level plan, then specify your in-state targeting on the News Information Form, after checkout.

Where We Send News:

View Where We Send News - Media Lists (opens new window)

National LITE, National, and National PLUS Plans:
One of the potentially confusing aspects of our service is the difference between the "National" plans.

NATIONAL LITE PLANS: with our National LITE distribution plans, your news will reach the top 1,000 daily news media nationwide (in U.S.), or you may use the "flex" options to target all media in up to ten (10) specific states, such as Northwest U.S.; or you may choose up to ten states anywhere in the U.S. (you don't have to choose ten, it can be 7, 8, or 9 states; as applicable to your news). This give you the flexibility of creating a custom regional distribution, or hitting the top news media nationwide. Of course, your news also is sent to all applicable national trade/consumer magazines related to your news. (This plan would be a near-enough replacement for our old Silver/Blue "National Basic" plans, although reaching fewer media than old plan.)
NATIONAL PLANS: with our National distribution plans, your news will reach all daily print/broadcast media outlets in the U.S., which would be a minimum of 3,500 newspaper and broadcast outlets. These plans are the most affordable and effective true dissemination plans of any major U.S. newswire service. You can add our Latino Netwire list, or Black PR Netwire list, at no extra cost, if applicable to your news. We do not send to PBS or PAX broadcast outlets; and we only send to Black/Latino media if applicable to project. (This plan would be a near-enough replacement for our old Silver/Blue "National Plus" plans.)
NATIONAL PLUS PLANS: with our NEW National PLUS distribution plans, we enhance our National level plan by personally revising your press release for maximum SEO, targeting your most desired keywords/phrases. We'll even insert anchor links around phrases for you to point to relevant pages on your site (deep-linking). You may also include a high-resolution print-ready image for media at no extra cost. (Anchor links are subject to our linking policy/formats, as noted in the related section, below, this page.)

Targeted Direct-to-Editors™ Distribution to U.S. Print Periodicals

Targeted Distribution Channels: With all Send2Press® news distribution plans, except the "Online Only" plans, your news is sent Direct-to-Editors™ for the purpose of enticing media professionals to consider your news for their audience. All news is highly "targeted" which means we do not send car news to cooking magazines, or biotech news to aviation editors. We do not send "news spam" to everybody in our lists.

Where We Send News:

Click Here to View Where We Send News (Media Lists)

News is sent to specific "industry categories" — which are also sometimes called micro-lists, channels, or selects — based on your actual news content. So, if you have a press release announcing a new book about animal health, this might be applicable to editors at book and library magazines, animal/vet magazines, and daily newspaper editors covering books and lifestyle, as well as talk radio programs that interview book authors. In this example, your news would NOT be sent to editors at motorcycle magazines, or any of the other dozens of industry categories we send news to. This is how "targeting" works. We do not "blast" news to every editor in our database, under any circumstance. (Note: we do have a weekly double-opt-in summary push of "all news" to 650-750 editors each Friday, who have specified they do not want news via RSS, or daily as it happens.)

How Many People Will The News Release Reach?

This is difficult to say, since we do not send out a "blast" to a fixed number of people. Nor, do we charge for so-called "micro lists" of choice specific contacts on top of our normal distribution fees for things like Telecom editors, or Music editors. Everything we do is targeted based on both the plan you purchase (i.e., "State," "4-State," or "National," or "Industry Focus"), and the content of your release. So, the number of people your news will reach obviously varies quite a bit based on the number of publications applicable to your news content, the breadth of the national daily news distribution you order, and the number of media contacts in any given category or U.S. state. Simply put, a press release announcing a cookbook, will likely have more media folk we can target than niche content like ocean contract rate management software.

You may research the magazines, daily newspapers, TV stations, and other media we send to by viewing our Media Lists page (see "Where We Send News" link, below). This is the best way to understand where your news will be sent. After checkout, on our News Information Form, you may specify applicable industry categories, or simply let us do that for you. Obviously we're going to choose all those media who might be interested, and not send it to those who won't be interested.

How to Choose Categories

You specify applicable categories on our News Information Form, after checkout in our Secure Order Center. You may optionally, have us "choose for you." In either case, we will always select the most appropriate media based on your actual press release content, regardless of what you specify on the form. The number of categories you may select is generally unlimited except with the "State" plan (and this does not apply to the "Online Only" plan where nothing is sent to editors directly except the weekly summary, obviously) — see the pricing pages, or Plan Comparison Chart for more information.

Which Plan Should I Choose?

In most cases, our "National" level plans are the best value as they have the best mix of distribution to applicable trade magazines, daily news, and search optimization — the "National" plans allow unlimited "applicable" industry categories related to your news. If your news is related to a "niche" category and won't be of interest to daily news editors, you should look at the "Industry Focus" plan, which targets the trade and consumer magazines, and only goes to daily news in your major metro area.

Special Note for Business Services News

From time to time we have clients with B2B or general business services news, who feel we should send their release to ALL industry categories, because they serve all industries. This is not appropriate. Remember that a press release is NOT direct marketing; it does not go to CEOs, business decision makers, and/or your potential clients. Press releases ONLY go to editors and journalists who will review your news and determine if they find if newsworthy, and of interest to their specific audience. If you happen to have clients and services in the medical industry, but your press release has nothing to do with medical related news, then editors at a surgical, medtech, or hospital publication will have zero interest and this amounts to "spam." Which we do not do. Please remember that all of our Send2Press® Direct-to-Editors™ distribution is highly targeted so that only appropriate editors will receive your news, based on the actual content of your press release.

Images with Press Releases – Overview:

FREE WEB IMAGE: All plans include one free Web resolution image/photo or logo (Web resolution means it is optimized for viewing on a PC or mobile device on the Internet; the quality is not high enough for printing in a magazine). Size will be 200x200 pixels, no larger than 9kb. Only a photo or logo is supported; you cannot use ad banners, or similar.
OPTIONAL PRINT READY IMAGE: With all distribution plans you may optionally include a print-ready image for $29, which we will host on our server, and provide a link to in the release when sent to media. This print-resolution image is up to 4x5-inches, 300dpi, RGB, and can be used by media who wish to print image in magazine or newspaper.
VIDEO NEWS RELEASES (VNRs): See the next section, below (after photo information section), "Multimedia Releases", for more information on free VNR options.

Logo or Web Images with Distribution

All plans provide the option of including a free Web-resolution (72dpi) logo or photo image. These Web Resolution images are shown online at the resolution of most Web site content, which is 72dpi (dots per inch). These images are suitable for online, but are not high enough quality for printing. A media editor would need to contact you, using your media contact info in the release, for a print-resolution image. You may provide an image any size and format and we will resize to our format (200x200 pixels, no more than 9kb).

Each additional Web image is $15, but only the first image will appear most places online.

The "Web Resolution" image will appear online at 200x200 pixels, and will fit to the box depending on type and layout of your image(s) (NOTE: there is a 15 pixel white Send2Press Newswire notation across bottom, so actual image size will be about 200Wx175H in square box). See any of the news stories on our site for examples.

Note that only a few sites actually use the image, but it will normally appear on sites in our network, RSS feeds, and sites like Google News (we were the very first newswire to have all our images appear in Google News, by the way), NewsBlaze, Wikio, Digg, Zimbio, etc. View any of our current client releases for examples of how the image appears in the story online. Most "news cloning" sites will not use any image, and sites in the PRN/Reuters networks will show only a link to image with caption/cutline (short description). Please understand we have no control over whether ANY other site will use, grab, scrape, or include the image with the story.

Important Reminder: we cannot use stock/royalty-free images with press releases as you do not have full reproduction rights, or the right to extend reproduction rights to other parties (see section, below, "Important Notes About Photo Content").

Required Photo Caption

A caption/cutline is required for all photographs (not needed for logos), which is a very brief description of what the image shows (it's NOT ad copy), and both the image link and caption count in the word length (see section above, this page, on understanding the word length of your release). No caption is needed for a logo (corporate brand logotype). You should credit the image to the photographer, if known, but that is not required unless your license with the photographer states it's needed.

NOTE: In the press release for media and archival copies, the image appears only as a link, not an attached binary file. Please include caption for image at bottom of your press release, below media contact, as in the following example:


*(Photo Link 72dpi: www.Send2Press.com/mediaboom/yourphoto_72dpi.jpg)

*(Caption: New WidgetWainCoat, being worn by bunny wabbit. Credit: Joe Smith Photography.)

Optional High-Resolution Image

With all plans except the Standard level "Online Only" plans, you may optionally include a 300dpi, 4x5-inch, print-ready image for the media, which is common with broad-appeal product images, and entertainment or celebrity news. This add-on option is $29 for each image, and can be ordered at same time as any distribution plan (except Standard "Online Only" plans). When ordering this option, a "Web Resolution" image is automatically included, since the high-resolution image must also be used online with the story, it doesn't give you a second Web image.

With some Send2Press distribution plans, like our National PLUS and special book/music packages, a high-resolution image may be included at no extra cost.

File Formats

For the free "Web Resolution" logo/photo, you should provide a .jpg, .tif, .png, .bmp, .eps/.ai, .pdf, or similar file (.gif images are color reduced and will have lower quality). File should be no larger than 2MB if possible. We will resize and optimize all images for our server, to the 200x200 pixel size. For optional "High-Resolution" (Print Quality) image option, please provide a Photoshop image 4x5-inch (5-inches one dimension, can be less than 4-inches in other dimension), 300dpi, RGB, saved as a standard JPEG (NOT a Web jpg) with quality of 7 or 8. We will resize if necessary (e.g., a 72dpi 8x10 image will be resaved to 300dpi 4x5). Any file format will do smaller than 5MB in size. We cannot use any graphics placed into a MS Word or rich text .rtf file.

PLEASE allow a minimum of one hour (up to two hours during peak times, such as Monday morning, and first/last days of each month) for the image to be optimized and hosted on our system before the release can post online and push to media.

IMPORTANT NOTES ABOUT PHOTO CONTENT:

We cannot use any "stock" or "royalty free" images (whether licensed or unlicensed), as this may violate the licensee and/or copyright holder's rights; and we cannot verify you have the rights to "reassign" (or extend) the license to third parties (such as newswires, Web sites, printed newsletters, or similar). We cannot use any image copied from a manufacturer Web site (e.g., if you have a "mall" of products from various companies, like costumes, or whatever, you do not own the rights to other company's images, and you cannot assign those image rights to us). If you are not 100 percent certain that you own ALL rights to an image, and that you will be legally responsible for any claims made for all use relating from the issuance of the release with said image, you should not use the image.
We can only use corporate/brand logos, or photographs of products, people, locations/property and the like. We will not accept or include any brochures, fliers, ad banners, Web banners, business cards, or similar graphics. The only exception is an event poster; however, due to the very small size of the Web Resolution Photo (200x200 pixels), this is usually not recommended. For the Web Photo, if you provide a product image that looks like an ad banner, brochure, flier, or similar, we may modify to fit our format, such as cropping out text elements, as needed, without prior image approval. You may submit an image for approval before release is submitted, if desired.
The "Web Resolution" photo is intended to be used for temporary enhancement of your news release when found online, and will generally not be used by the media as it is not print-quality (although, this is changing as many blogs/bloggers transition from print to online-only). The Web Resolution image may not be permanent, and may be reduced in quality from the image provided. Please see any current news story found in our news indexes for examples of how the image will appear online.
For sites like Google News, which "scrape" the text and visual content from our site(s), we have NO control over whether Google will properly capture any content, including image(s) found in your story. From time to time Google News has "hiccups" and may skip capturing images due to system issues in their network. Social networks like Digg sometimes grab the image, somtimes they don't. Again, the free "Web Resolution" image is intended to enhance the online copies of your story, but we have no way to control or guarantee that ANY other site or network will capture, display, or link to any image on our network.

Video News Releases (VNRs) — Free:

With all of our plans you may convert your news release into a "VNR" simply by providing an embed code from a video you have posted to your YouTube channel. This allows us to take out the unique 11-digit I.D. from the video, and embed that into our site along with your press release text. This can be useful if you have a promo clip, product demo, presentation, interview, music video, etc., to help better promote your news. This is free of charge (allow a little extra time to set-up the VNR format on our site, which must be done prior to the release going out). A hyperlink to the VNR will be included in the press release.

Click here to view example VNRs (opens new window)

Example of the unique I.D. code for YouTube video (in blue):
... www.youtube.com/v/65hxi9rWEl8 ...

Social Media Bugs:

As more and more companies join the social mediaverse, it's become far more common now that you may have links to a Twitter page, a MySpace page, Facebook page, and/or YouTube channel. You can now include prominent links to these social media pages at the bottom of your stories on our site, simply by providing us with the direct URL/URI links to your social pages. If we have a profile / eMediaKit™ set-up for you, we will also include the link to your custom RSS news feed.

View example on actual news story (opens new window)

Audio Press Releases:

With our National and National PLUS level distribution plans, we provide the option to "audio enable" your press release on our site using our NeotropeVoice technology, first introduced in 2004. This is free, on request, with National plans (optional with other plans), but is generally not recommended for some kinds of highly technical news, or full of people's names (pronunciation may be way off). With audio enabled, you should always link to the story page on our site with the audio, and NOT directly to the audio clip. You CAN copy the audio clip to your own site, if you wish.

View example on actual news story (opens new window)

How to Provide Your Multimedia:

For the social media bugs and VNR option, simply provide a second MS Word (.doc), or rich-text (.rtf) file when uploading your press release, which has all of these elements. Pasting the info into the special instructions box on the News Information Form generally won't work, since it will truncate anything after a ?= (question mark) in a URL, as a security measure. For Audio Press Releases, simply specify on the News Information Form, you would like this option.

Important Notes About Multimedia Options:

As you might expect, enabling any or all of these options adds to the time it takes to set-up and push your news release, and so it's not usually recommended if you're in a super-duper rush mode (video set-up adds little or no time). If you submit a release right when we're closing, and want it to go out prior to when we open, we may not be able to implement all of these options for you. The audio option will usually be enabled after the release goes out, as time permits the same day (again, if it's the end of the day, and there is no time, it won't be done until next day).

Send2Press Distribution Plan Reporting Overview:

With all distribution plans we provide the following:

Clear Time Confirmation and Quick Report:
Once we have confirmed your release has pushed to the media and posted online, we hand-prepare a simple confirmation e-mail which has links to your story on our site, on several sites and social networks which will have the story very quickly, as well as a custom search link for Google News. (Note: with Online Posting Subscription plans, only a confirmation is provided.)
Send2Press SiteWatch (NetwireWatch) Report(s):
Following the day after your story goes out, we provide a second hand-prepared report which shows direct links to your story appearing on sites in the Neotrope News Network, social networks, and other sites capturing the news. We also provide links to general syndication sites, where you can view your news along with our other stories. With this report we also include QuickStats, showing how many times your story has been read in the first 24 hours on our main site. This report is provided as both an MS Word (.doc), and PDF file. With our EXTENDED Level distribution plans, we also provide a follow-up report a week later, with additional update on readership on Send2Press.com and the PRN for Journalists (PRNJ) Web site. (SiteWatch not included with Online Posting Subscription plans.)
Ongoing Reader Tracking:
With all stories on our main site, we provide a very simple tracker (found below the grey "Terms of Use" box on all stories after Jan. 1, 2005), which you can view without any log-in/password. This system tracks how many times your story has been read today, this week, this month, and this year. This tracking is permanent, and allows you to easily review your current and archival news on our site to confirm continued visibility from our SEO/SEM component (which keeps your news in search engines).
Neotrope PRTrax™ Reader Dashboard:
With all plans we provide a basic PRTrax account, which gives you ongoing readership metrics of how your news is being found in search engines by keywords, readership by language/country, by technology type, as well as referrer information (see where people are clicking through to read story from, such as Digg, Twitter, Google, AOL, etc.). This reporting is tracked from an account log-in, which you may view at any time. Simple bar-graph style reports make it easy to copy-paste into MS Word if you wish to provide this data to a client/partner for additional proof of ROI.
Click Here to Learn About Neotrope's PRTrax™ Service

Important Notes About Reporting/Tracking:

NOTE: these reports do NOT track traditional "media pick-ups" such as a magazine running your news 3 months later, or a printed newspaper or broadcast media outlet choosing to use your news. Most legitimate media outlets will contact you to fact check or get a quote, or obtain a print ready image, or even a review unit; however, this is not always the case. Generally it's wise to learn to use the advanced search options in Google, and do periodic searches which include your company name, product name, CEO/principal, or whatever else was unique in your release, so that you can catch media pick-ups which may occur much later than when your news actually pushed.

With the exception of our National level plans, we do not provide a list of "where your news was sent" with distribution plans. You may research this information on your own, in our publication and broadcast outlet media lists page, found here.

We never provide a list of media contacts by name, phone, or e-mail as that would be giving away our proprietary information, and a violation of both our privacy policy and the privacy of those media folk we send news to. We do not sell, or license, media contact information.

A Brief History of Time:

Neotrope was one of the first companies in the marketing industry to perfect SEO for our clients during the dawn of the World Wide Web, while building brand identity projects, Web sites, and e-commerce solutions for our clients. Prior to the launch of Send2Press.com, during the mid 1990s, we offered SEO-optimized press release placement in early search engines like Infoseek and AltaVista, before Google even existed (we offered these services only to our corporate clients, on our ga-ga.com site at the time).

When we spun off Send2Press from the MindsetNetwire/MindsetMedia offerings in 2000, we were promoting SEO right on our home page from day one. Don't believe us? Check the Internet "Wayback Machine" (archive.org) and see for yourself. We've been doing SEO, and specifically search optimization of news content and the pages/sites where that content lives, longer than anybody; and far longer than the majority of our upstart competitors have even been in business.

All our clients, regardless of plan/service level, benefit from our ContextEngine® technology (which includes our old dot.Sorcerer™ and DotComMojo™ technologies) which has helped us place literally millions of keywords/phrases into the top five in Google and other search portals for 15 years.

Powered by ContextEngine®

All Send2Press plans include basic inclusion in our ContextEngine® system which helps our content rank at top of search engines like Google under phrases found in your release text; this includes both Send2Press.com and news portals in the Neotrope News Network (i.e., eNewsChannels.com, MusicIndustryNewswire.com, CaliforniaNewswire.com, etc.). Depending on the plan you purchase, the amount of hand-work versus automated work applied to your project will vary (more expensive plan will equal more hand-work in choosing META data for your content).

Our "patent worthy" system automatically scans your text once posted into our network for unique phrases, and helps to create relevant cross-links within our pages to help the page rank higher, in addition to traditional META tags, title tags, and similar methodologies. This is a very organic process and works entirely within the normal accepted practices of search portals like Google.

SEO News Releases and SEO+PR™

Our plans include a wealth of SEO features, at no additional cost:

You may specify your own desired keywords/phrases on the News Information Form, after checkout, on which you submit your news release project. These keywords must be relevant to the actual release text, or will have no value when embedded into the META data or body data of the page(s). Additionally, with our new National PLUS plans we include our SEO+PR™ service where we will revise your text to highlight the phrases you most want to be found under (you have final approval), and also embed anchor links in the text to provided page URLs/URIs on your site with complementary content (deep-linking).
With all our plans, a real person will pick out unique phrases by hand for submission to systems like Technorati, Delicous, DIIGO, Reddit, and similar. Some of these additional tags appear in our RSS feeds, and on other sites when "cloned" by news aggregators.
Free SEO Keyword Density Checker: All clients have access to our free online utility to optimize the "weight" of your desired search terms simply by pasting your release into a dynamic box, entering your three most wanted phrases, then adjusting the text to reach a mimimum recommended "density" for that phrase. This self-serve tool is optional, and is provided to clients after checkout is complete.
Anchor Links in Text: With all our plans you may include up to five anchor links around words/phrases in your text linking to your site. Note that many sites will strip out any HTML links, so it's always recommended to include one visible, fully formed URL/URI at bottom of release, such as:
For more information, visit: www.Send2Press.com.

See examples of how to do this in the section regarding anchor link formatting, below, this page.

Important Notes Regarding SEO and "News Spam":

We cannot guarantee news will be found under any specific phrase in any search engine. You can "optimize" your release for specific phrases, and you may find our free Keyword Density Checker to be helpful in this regard (you have access to the density tool after checkout). With an "optimized" release, your content will be more likely to rank higher under the optimized phrases, but we have no control over any specific ranking.

AVOID NEWS SPAM:
We have been warning our clients about the perils of "News Spam" for more than ten years. Back in 2000 we ran a promotional campaign educating small business about this problem. As you might imagine, it's only gotten worse a decade later. Basically, if you post your news on a dozen so-called "free news posting sites" (many of which are located in other countries), this will deprecate your news when it appears on legitimate news networks, because search portals think you're trying to "stuff" the search results with your news. Or, another way of looking at it is that it's no longer news when it's issued by a true newswire service, if you've already posted it all over the Web on the crap sites.

Many of these low-rent news sites that allow you to post news for free have become the modern incarnation of the dreaded link exchange sites from the earlier days of the Web. Posting your news on such sites prior to posting in our highly credible networks, will lessen the value of our optimization, as search engines initially cannot sort out the wheat from the chaffe. Eventually they will settle down to only include credible sites, but not always. If you spam search engines with links from low-quality news posting portals with your story, it will permanently conflict with all our good efforts on your behalf.

Daily "Cutoff" Times, Deadlines, and Scheduling:

Our daily "cutoff" time for news to push the same day is generally 5:30 p.m. EDT/EST (2:30 p.m. PDT/PST), for a complete, properly formatted release. Normally releases can push within 120 minutes* from receipt if complete and properly formatted project. *NOTE: Allow additional time on last/first days of each month, first Monday of month, first two hours of each Monday morning, and if your release has photo/logo, or special additions like high-resolution 300dpi image, first-time PRTrax™ account set-up, international add-ons, and similar options.
Our daily "cutoff" time for news to push "very early" the next morning, or next business day, is generally 7:30 p.m. EDT/EST (4:30 p.m. PDT/PST). Example: for a release to be scheduled prior to 11 a.m. EDT/EST Monday morning, we need to have that by 7:30 p.m. EDT/EST Friday night.
For the STANDARD "Online Only" plan the cutoff is 3 p.m. EDT/EST for same day publication. If later in day, it may not post until next morning once business is open.

"EDT/EST" refers to Eastern Daylight Savings Time, Eastern Standard Time, or U.S. East Coast Time (New York). "PDT/PST" refers to Pacific Daylight Savings Time, Pacific Standard Time, or U.S. West Coast Time (California). Most news services push news based on Eastern Time.

Scheduling Options

You may schedule an EXTENDED Distribution Plan (formerly "Blue" level plan) to push any day, date, and hour of the day, provided the project is submitted prior to our cutoff time. Example push time might be: 6 a.m. ET, June 1, or 9 p.m. June 2, or simply "ASAP."
You may schedule a STANDARD Distribution Plan (formerly "Silver" level plan) to push any time between 5 a.m. and 8 p.m. EDT/EST, Monday through Friday, and 8 a.m. EDT/EST Saturday. Generally releases scheduled for same time will push in order received, meaning we won't push five releases at exactly the same time to the same editor at a daily newspaper, as a courtesy.
WRITING AND EDITING: Per the main page on our site regarding writing/editing services, we need one full day to do a one-draft revision/re-write, and ask for 2-3 working days for a full writing project. Generally you would wait for approval of your final release text before scheduling your distribution (this is the default option on the News Information Form).

The Process of Sending News

Remember, this is not an "instant" process, such as you have when you paste news onto those cheesy free news posting sites. We're a real newswire service and there are many steps to "getting the word out" with your release when we send it Direct-to-Editors™.

Here's an example of the process. Once we have your order in-house, we:

review your text for content, formatting, and any omissions like headline, or media contact info (releases that don't meet our "minimum requirements" will be delayed)
set-up any photo/logo, fit to our size and format including minor retouch if needed
format release to AP style and our own formatting
post archive copies in UTF-8 plain text and PDF formats, and image(s), to our media server
submit release to media using the Send2Press Direct-to-Editors™ media database
post online version for capture by news systems, NewsML, and RSS; hand-embed META data, Technorati tags and other data for syndicators
verify the story has been captured by systems like Google News
also, with our "Blue Extended" plans, we must also submit and verbally confirm your release with a wire partner to fit their system requirements
hand-submit your news to systems like Digg, Reddit, Delicous, Diigo, Yahoo Buzz!, etc.
prepare a "clear time" (also called "push time") confirmation e-mail for you, and send that to you manually.

As you can see, this is all done by real people and often takes more than a few minutes. Please be reasonably patient in allowing all of these steps to be performed. Often we can push your news within 120 minutes (two hours), but during very busy times, certain days of month, Monday morning, and so forth, you may need to allow additional time for your project to be "done right."

Normal Business Hours

Our normal business hours are 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. PDT/PST (California) which is 12 noon to 8 p.m. EDT/EST (New York), Monday through Friday, and closed on major U.S. holidays. You may order services through our Secure Order Center any time of the day or night 24/7/365, however we can only personally confirm and review your project during our normal business hours.

Click Here to View our U.S. Holiday Hours

Click Here to Contact Us for Assistance

Submitting News on Weekends

It should be self-evident that if we are closed weekends, and you submit a project on Sunday, then we cannot setup and schedule your release to go out prior to when we open Monday morning (i.e., submitting a project on Sunday to go out at 7 a.m. EDT/EST Monday will not happen).

IMPORTANT: Any projects submitted over a weekend will not be reviewed or personally confirmed prior to 9 a.m. PDT/PST Monday morning, and will be scheduled ASAP at that time in order received.

How to Include Anchor Links in Your Release

With all Send2Press STANDARD (formerly "Silver") and EXTENDED (formerly "Blue") level plans, we do support hyperlinks (anchor links) around phrases, in addition to full URL/URI linking (with EXTENDED level plans, PRN now supports anchor links as well!). Basically, any visible URL (i.e., www.yoursite.xyz/pagename) automatically turns into a live link on our site, and other sites that pull our content.

We will typically limit anchor links to five links of any kind; and a MAXIMUM OF FOUR ANCHOR LINKS AROUND WORDS/PHRASES. Any more than that, and some search portals may adversely tag the page for "link farming" and deprecate it in search results (not good).

You should ALWAYS have at least one full URL, typically at bottom of release, in this format:
For more information, visit: http://www.mysitename.xyz.
This is because many sites that pull (syndicate, clone, copy, etc.) news from Send2Press and PRN will strip out any HTML, such as anchor links around words/phrases; so, by having at least one full URL visible, you're assured that folks finding the news online should see at least one link to your site (some news clone sites do strip out all HTML including any URL, but that is outside our control).

Required Format for Anchor Links

For live links (hotlinks, hyperlinks, anchor links) around words/phrases, you need to format the links in MS Word (if using OpenOffice.org, or comparable, you would "save as" to MS Word or RTF format) as live links, where they become underlined with the link as shown in this illustration:

In your word processor you would basically highlight the words/phrases and then mouse-click "insert hyperlink" (procedure will vary by word processor, so check your built-in help for your program), then type in the URL those words should link to. We will always double check links actually work before anything goes out to media or online.

IMPORTANT! Anchor links around phrases cannot be placed in headline or sub-head due to how the RSS feeds and syndication systems work. URLs must be to actual landing page, not a redirect URL. So, if your link says www.mysite.net, but lands on www.myothersite.com, we will correct that when hand-embedding the actual URL on our site (we won't correct the PRN copy, only the Send2Press.com story page). It is our policy that anyone clicking a link from our site should be able to see what the actual landing page is from hovering the mouse over the URL. Affiliate program links of any kind are strictly forbidden.

We will not accept "news releases" which promote mortgage refinance and lead generation, canadian or internet pharmacies for otc drug sales, herbal weight loss products (hoodia, etc.), stock related reports on public companies, money making report sites, income opportunity sites or "make money at home" link portals and seminars, internet casino link list sites/forums or "magazines," sports book/betting "pick" sites, news and headline sites which aggregate stories from other sources and have no original content, coupon sites linking to affiliate program shopping sites, one million pixel advertising sites, affiliate program resellers of travel packages (e.g. "Coastal vacations" or "global travel"), raffles or essay writing contests (or similar), health/dental plans or water purification systems (or similar multi-level plans), credit repair or score improvement loan services, mortgage loan modification services, payday loans, affiliate branded calling cards or international third-party branded credit cards, work at home lead generation and landing pages, or obvious fraudulent practices. Also, so-called employment agencies ("career placement") which change their company name every year to make it seem like they are a new business (to disassociate themselves from prior company name customer complaints) may be rejected.

SEO companies are most welcome to use our service, and even partner with us to promote your clients across our network, which contains many sites with "high pagerank," and which have been online longer than most people have known what SEO is (we've been doing SEO since 1996, which is highly documented in the Wayback machine; in other words, we can prove it). Inquire if you'd like to be a strategic SEO+PR™ partner.

FAUX ARTICLES AND ADVERTORIAL: We do not accept "advertorial" material, editorial articles, op-ed pieces, or similar. A press release is a NEWS announcement, not prose or an unsolicited manuscript. Fake letters to the president, gimmick promotions to give iPhones to under-privileged chimps, and similar nonsense will generally not be accepted by any legitimate wire service.

LEGAL/LAWSUIT CONTENT: As of July 1st, 2008, we only accept lawsuit related news if it is in reference to a successful judgement (court win) which is a matter of public record; and you will need to provide copy of court docket showing this (if you can't produce proof of the case, we can't accept the release!). NOTE: we no longer accept any release content related to the following examples (or related): pending civil lawsuit matters ("my neighbor kicked my dog, and so he must be a nazi"); "alleged" wrongdoing by court officers; complaints against businesses ("bed bugs put the mark of the devil on my thighs"); or class action matters (again, unless it's announcing a "win" in court); or appeals for lost cases. We are removing any and all such content from our network due to "alleged" abuse from lawyers and law firms seeking to mis-lead both the media and public using newswire services such as ours. Since you can pretty much allege anything about anybody in a court case, we don't wish to be a party to unfairly trying a case in the public arena, when in many cases (literally), these shoddy allegations are proven to be false, but the allegation would remain online forever (not cool, Mr. lawyer, not cool!). Per our Terms of Service (TOS) all content on our websites is subject to removal at our sole discretion, and if you don't like that, then don't use our service.

WE WILL REJECT "NEWS RELEASES" OF SIMILAR NATURE TO THESE AT OUR SOLE DISCRETION. If you feel your news may fall into one or more of these categories or conditions, please contact us FIRST by e-mail with example of your release, prior to placing an order, and clearly identify you are asking for pre-approval.

WE ARE UNDER NO OBLIGATION TO ACCEPT ANY SUBMITTED NEWS CONTENT WE FEEL IS EITHER NON-NEWSWORTHY, MIS-LEADING, OR ADVERTORIAL. WE DO NOT ACCEPT ANONYMOUS CONTENT AND ALL RELEASES MUST HAVE CLEAR ATTRIBUTION AND MEDIA CONTACT INFORMATION.

DISCLAIMER: AS WITH ALL PUBLIC RELATIONS AND MARKETING CAMPAIGNS, INDIVIDUAL RESULTS WILL VARY DUE TO NUMEROUS FACTORS OUTSIDE THE CONTROL OF ANY NEWS SERVICE, INCLUDING THE "NEWSWORTHINESS" OF RELEASE CONTENT, WORLD AND LOCAL EVENTS, EDITORIAL FOCUS OF ANY PRINT OR BROADCAST MEDIA OUTLET, AND PERSONAL MINDSET OF EDITORS REVIEWING CONTENT IN DETERMINING WHETHER IT IS SUITABLE FOR THEIR AUDIENCE. NEITHER SEND2PRESS, NOR ANY NEWSWIRE SERVICE, CAN GUARANTEE ANY PLACEMENT WITHIN A PRINT OR BROADCAST MEDIA OUTLET.