Datelines in Public Relations Writing
As most of our readers know, I write about food, drink, lifestyle and travel in my spare time. As a result, I get about 30 or so news releases, story pitches, calendar listings and other tactics from PR folks across the country on any given day.
Being in PR myself, I used to (and mostly still) live and die by AP Style. Like many of us, I have started making some small exceptions given we are in the age of tweeting and texting.
But, my daily pet peeve continues to happen over…and over…and over.
It has to do with my hometown of Phoenix, and nearly all of public relations folks who send me information getting the dateline wrong in their release or pitch.
(For those unfamiliar, a dateline is a quick note at the onset of the news release – before the first sentence – that gives the reader or media target the location and date of the actual release.)
It has gotten so bad that I recently re-looked up “datelines” on AP Style’s website (since my book is from 2001, I thought maybe something changed), to make sure I wasn’t crazy.
I am not – at least not about this.
Phoenix, like 29 other cities in the United States and about 50 worldwide, is what is called a stand-alone dateline. It is actually an honor (in my opinion) to be a stand-alone as it means the city is so well-known that it doesn’t require a state or country modifier after the city itself.
For example, a news release from Phoenix would read:
PHOENIX (May 31, 2018) – News release first sentence here…
It would not read – and should not read:
PHOENIX, Ariz. (May 31, 2018) – News release first sentence here…
The above also reminded me of another error I see over and over.
When you do need to list the state after the city, it is in AP Style, which is not necessarily how it would be when writing a letter or giving a billing address to Amazon.
For example, a news release from Scottsdale would read:
SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. (May 31, 2018) – News release first sentence here…
It would not read – and should not read:
SCOTTSDALE, AZ (May 31, 2018) – News release first sentence here…
For more clarification, click here.
