Most care homes have a story a month and send none of them. The reason is not that nothing happens. It is that writing a release feels like a job for someone else, and when one does get written it reads like a brochure, so the editor deletes it. The fix is a shape, and the shape is simple.
What a local paper is actually looking for
A local newsroom in 2026 is three or four people filling a website every day and a paper once a week. They need pictures of local people doing things, with names, on dates. A care home produces exactly that: a resident's 100th birthday, a garden built by a primary school, a carer who ran the marathon, a wedding anniversary nobody expected to reach. The bar is not high. The bar is: is this a real thing, with real people, that happened here?
What they do not want is news about the home. A new logo, a refurbished reception, an award from a trade body nobody has heard of. Those are stories about you. The paper wants stories about its readers' neighbours.
The first paragraph does all the work
The editor reads one paragraph. It has to say who did what, where and when, in one or two sentences a reader would understand with no context.
Residents at Fernbank Lodge in Lancaster planted a new sensory garden with pupils from Scotforth St Paul's primary school on Tuesday, and will open it to families with an afternoon tea on Saturday 18 October.
Who: residents and pupils. What: planted a garden. Where: Fernbank Lodge, Lancaster. When: Tuesday, with a second date to hang a diary note on. Every word of that could run as printed. That is the test.
Then three short paragraphs
The second paragraph adds the detail that makes it a story: why the garden, which plants, whose idea. The third is the quote. The fourth is the practical bit: the open day, who can come, how to get in touch.
The quote should come from a named person and sound like them. The manager, a resident, a relative, the head teacher. One sentence of feeling and one of fact:
"Margaret has not been outside without a coat since March, and she was out there in the sun for two hours choosing where the lavender went," said Sarah Jones, the home's registered manager. "The garden is for the families as much as the residents, which is why we are opening it with a tea."
Not "We are delighted to announce the opening of our new state-of-the-art sensory garden facility." Nobody has ever said that sentence aloud.
The photograph is not optional
A release without a picture is a release with half the chance of running. The photograph needs people in it, close enough to see faces, doing the thing. Residents and children with trowels, not an empty flowerbed. Landscape orientation, taken on a phone in daylight, with the names of the people in it listed in the email in order from left to right, and written permission from each of them or their representative to be photographed and named. Attach the file to the email. A link to a folder is one more click the editor will not make.
Notes to editors
Under the release, three or four lines of fact: the home's address, what it is registered for, how many residents it has, the manager's name and a phone number that will be answered. This is where the editor goes when they need to check something at 4pm.
When to send it, and to whom
Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday, before eleven in the morning, when the desk is planning rather than closing. Send it to a named reporter or the news desk address, not to the general enquiries inbox, and put the first line of the release in the subject line. If there is an event, send the release a week before so a photographer can be booked, and again the morning after with the pictures.
Follow up once, by phone, two days later. Ask whether they received it and whether it is any use. Do not ask when it will run. Then, whatever happened, send the next one next month. Editors remember homes that reliably send usable stories, and over a year those homes become the ones they ring when they need a care story.
What gets a release deleted
- No date, so it is not news.
- No names, so it is not about anyone.
- No photo, or a photo of a building.
- A first paragraph about the home's values.
- Jargon: person-centred, state-of-the-art, enhanced wellbeing provision.
- Three quotes, each from a director.
- A PDF. Put the text in the email.
The one that always runs
A 100th birthday with a card from the King, a photograph of the resident with the card and a line about what they did for a living. It runs every time, in every paper in the country. If your home has one coming up, it is the easiest piece of local coverage you will ever get, and the family will frame it.