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SubjectRe: draft for review - press release
   Date: 	Thu, 14 Jan 1999 10:36:50 -0500 (EST)
From: "Albert D. Cahalan" <acahalan@cs.uml.edu>

> PRESS RELEASE - LINUX KERNEL 2.2.0
>
> The Linux kernel development team has released stable kernel version
> 2.2.0. This release emcompasses the bug fixes and enhancements of the

Woah, STOP! Clearly you are a geek, nerd, or techie.
Generally, it is bad to mention bug fixes in public.
Bug fixes imply buggy software. Did you ever wonder why
Microsoft doesn't feature hotfix updates on their main web
page? Even Red Hat has picked up a clue about this.

Remember, Microsoft programs don't have bugs. They have "issues". :-)



Albert, your press release is a lot better, but it's still better suited
for a technical magazine such as Dr. Dobbs Journal. (Greg Smart's was
so technical that it should have been in release notes, or maybe as a
posting to comp.os.sources.unix).

As always, it's critical to pitch the press release to the appropriate
audience. If the idea is to push out this press release to the
mainstream press, it needs to concentrate much more on how Linux 2.2
offers solutions to the problems which the target audience would be
interested in. (i.e., business solutions if this is targetted at
financial magazines, ISP solutions if it is targetted at that crew, and
so on). Quotes (i.e., testimonials) from appropriate represenatatives
is also good.

People who want to write press releases should take a look at some
websites of computer companies, and see the type of style they are
written in. Since we are indeed techies and we probably want to retain
a certain amount of self-respect, toning down some of the marketing
manager's excesses isn't necessarily a bad thing --- but just keep in
mind that press releases are written in their own language, and if you
want to make the best impression, you do need to speak a bit of
marketingnese.

Let me stress a very important point --- before you write a press
release, think very carefully about exactly what you wish to acomplish,
and who will be reading the press release. The whole point of press
releases is to communiate to *other* people, and they often have a
different mindset than we do.

- Ted

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