Not every announcement is the same kind of story, and treating a human-interest feature the same way you'd treat a factual product announcement produces writing that feels wrong in a way most readers can sense even if they can't name why. Recognizing which type of release you're actually writing changes the tense, the structure, and the entire narrative approach.
Why Hard News and Soft News Need Genuinely Different Treatment
A hard news release — an acquisition, a leadership change, a factual milestone — is about clear, dated events, and it's written in the past tense with the most important fact stated immediately, following the inverted pyramid directly. A soft news release — a trend, a personal story, a "here's something interesting happening" piece — behaves more like a magazine feature, often written in present tense, building interest gradually rather than front-loading every fact.
Choosing the right approach should depend on:
- Whether the release centers on a discrete, dated event or an ongoing situation and story
- Whether the value is primarily informational or primarily narrative and human-interest
- Whether journalists in your target outlets are more likely to want facts fast or a story with texture
- Whether the news needs to be time-stamped precisely or can be framed more timelessly
A Simple Framework
- Determine whether your announcement is a discrete event or an ongoing trend or story
- For hard news, use the past tense and lead immediately with the core fact
- For soft news, consider present tense and a structure that builds interest before delivering full detail
- Match your approach to how the target publication typically covers similar stories
> Tip: A useful structure for a soft news release is establishing a relatable situation first, introducing a genuinely surprising or interesting turn, and then supporting that turn with real detail — building curiosity before delivering the full picture, rather than stating everything upfront the way a hard news release would.
Example
Before: A feature-worthy human interest story about a local business owner's unusual background, written with the flat, fact-first structure of a hard news announcement.
After: The same story opening with a relatable situation, introducing the surprising detail that makes it interesting, and then supporting that with the full story — structured more like a feature article a reader would actually want to keep reading.
Common Mistakes
- Applying rigid hard news structure to a story that would work better as a narrative feature
- Using past tense for an ongoing trend story that reads more naturally in present tense
- Front-loading every fact in a soft news release, eliminating the curiosity that would draw a reader in
- Failing to recognize which type of story you're actually telling before starting to write
Before writing, sketching out which approach fits your specific story is worth doing deliberately rather than defaulting to one structure out of habit. SeoWolf's Notepad is a simple place to plan that structure before drafting.
A fact announced and a story told are two different kinds of writing, and a release that mismatches the two — treating a genuine story like a bare announcement, or a simple fact like a dramatic narrative — tends to lose its intended audience either way.