Writing Press Releases

I used to think a press release would have to be a big deal. Like a press release saying that the president will set forth his nominee for Supreme Court justice at 3:00 p.m. Wednesday. The White House has a mimeograph, I'm guessing, and Robert Gibbs quick types out a stencil, gets it hooked on the machine like you have to do, and runs off a few copies. Helen Thomas is standing there to get the first copy. You remember, when you make a stencil, it's best to turn off the ribbon all together, so the typewriter font is striking the stencil directly.

A few years ago I found a big mimeograph type of machine under a staircase. It was there for who knows what reason. Maybe it didn't work. Maybe they shoved it out of the way when they got a copier. But give me the old technology, a mimeograph, maybe a hectograph. Remember those? I'll say something about them in a minute.

This mimeograph I found was big, and I couldn't get it working properly. Something was always wrong. I can't remember what all, maybe the inking was bad, or it wouldn't turn, something like that. I tried everything but never could get it going. The big thing that sticks in my mind -- and I can smell it still after all these years, at least in my memory -- is the smell of the ink, the various smells of a mimeograph. It doesn't smell good but it's very distinctive. You know it when you smell it!

OK, a hectograph, the ones I knew of, came in a little box. They were flat in a little tray, and the tray was full of some kind of hardened gelatin. You typed a stencil of some sort, an 8½ x 11 sheet, then carefully set it on the gelatin. The image on the stencil transferred to the gel. Then you pulled that up and you would put down a blank piece of paper, then pull it up. It would print that image on the picture in a light blue color, or light red, I think. Definitely the blue. A friend and I put out a little neighborhood newsletter a few times with a hectograph. I believe I still have a copy of one of them in my files.

This was a post about writing press releases, though. You expect press releases to be released for major events. But I've come across a few "press releases" that were to be released "immediately," that were just stuff like the library will be having movie night for kids 12 and under on Wednesday, that kind of thing. I saw one of these "press releases" to be released "immediately" today that was for something miniscule like that. And I thought, wow, it must be boring these things to be in the press.