What a news release was:

• news item, call for more info

But today:

What clients want

• Website: investors, customers
• Satisfy legal disclosure

What the press wants

• Some journalists: short and to the point
• Others: cut-and-paste-ready

What social media is doing

• New distribution mechanisms
• A new target audience: bloggers
• The social media news release

Recommendations:

• Shorter, catchy, news-like headlines (within reason)
• Subhead that hits key messages
• First paragraph constructed to get press interested -- if it's all they read, they understand the news
• Rest of release developed to meet other objectives
• Be skeptical of any rule with "always" or "never" in it. There are exceptions to most rules.