Of late, I have been reading a lot of articles and blog posts predicting the end of the press release. Broadly speaking these articles fell under two categories. Rather disappointingly, the first category uses the “death of the press release?” as nothing more than a rhetorical question, only to call for its death on the basis that it amounts to a pre-assembled pile of marketing speak. More interestingly, the second category uses the question as a stepstone to discuss the increasing space storytelling is occupying in the PR world.

Falling under the latter category is this article in the September issue of CorpComms. In this insightful piece we learn how Nissan recently hired a former Reuters correspondent as its new editor-in-chief while simultaneously mooting plans to ‘get into the business of killing press releases and writing stories’. Simon Sproule, the company’s head of marketing and communications, heralded the endeavour as a ‘rival to the media’.

No matter the angle, I was struck by the fact that the question mark was usually nothing more than a formality. The proper assessment of the function press releases (still) play in PR was always eluded. It was either a case of preaching for press releases’ death or talking about a rising phenomenon.

Don’t get me wrong, the reason I believe the question deserves a proper assessment has nothing to do with me being a fervent advocate of the press release or an enemy of storytelling and virtual newsrooms. I genuinely believe storytelling should be an aspirational goal for PR teams. Still, the lack of proper assessment of the press release’s role in the new media age means one fails to cast light on an interesting phenomenon — PR teams’ accessibility to a new type of audience, and how this redefines the frontiers of PR.

Rather than thinking in terms of format (press release versus virtual newsrooms), let’s think in terms of audiences for a minute. More than just a format, the press release was always a way to communicate with a very specific audience – journalists. The reason why storytelling is one of the angles through which the death of the press release question is analysed is that there’s a new audience available to PR teams — and indeed new formats such as videos seem more appropriate than press releases to communicate with that new audience.

But why jump to the conclusion that the rise of storytelling and virtual newsrooms makes press releases irrelevant to journalists? The majority of the articles I read failed to acknowledge that press releases still act as a relevant and prevalent format in PR teams’ interaction with journalists. While journalists have undoubtedly been receptive to the diversification of channels through which PR material is put out, most of them seem to remain fervent advocates of the press release as a first port-of-call for story development.

From conversations I’ve had with journalists, it seems very few consider Twitter or videos posted on virtual newsrooms as a reliable source, let alone a first port of call. And it’s not to deny the importance of storytelling with the new audience PR teams have started to interact with in the new media age.

Sticking to an analysis in terms of audiences has another virtue. Differentiating between the old and new audiences PR teams interact with illustrates how an audience that was traditionally at the receiving end of more straightforward marketing is now available to PR teams. This mere fact speaks volumes about the increasingly blurry barriers between PR and marketing, and by extension how integrated these functions need to be to ensure optimal and coherent audience targeting.