How to Write an Earnings Release? Follow Bing's Advice for Flacks & Hacks

The press release is not dead, but is evolving. But one version of the press release is alive and doing ok even as it has not evolved.

That is the earnings release for public companies. Part of the reason earning releases have not evolved is due to legal and financial constraints. Investors expect these releases to contain specific information. The SEC expects the releases to meet certain standards.

Fortune columnist Stanley Bing, who in real life heads up CBS' communications department, offers up a template to make it easier for flacks to write earnings release each quarter. Bing also offers a template for hacks to write articles on corporate earnings each quarter.

Following Bing's templates, outlined in The Mad Libs Report, would save time, minimize stress for PR pros and journalists alike.

New Front Opens in Battle Between Flacks & Hacks: Bing vs. Jarvis

In Jeff Jarvis is a twit, Stanley Bing takes Jarvis to task for suggesting:

1. The press release is dead.
2. Journalists do not need PR pros.

I've written before that I don't think the press release is dead. It is evolving. It is interactive, multimedia and SEO'ed, but not dead.

And I also think journalists do need PR pros -- and PR pros, of course, need journalists.

But there's long been a tension and a war of words (on Twitter, that's a war of 140 characters) between flacks and hacks.

Technology hasn't changed the battlefield.

It's only made it easier for everyone to watch and participate.

Read Bing's rant. It's a good defense of PR. Of course, when he's not a columnist, he's the head of corp comm for CBS. So read the comments, too, to get more of Jarvis' perspective (he responds on Bing's blog).

But the most important point is Bing's final sentence: "nobody benefits when the hacks attack the flacks." I would add, flacks don't benefit when they attack hacks.

What we really need to do is respect each other.

Can Stanley Bing Unplug? Or Four Steps the Rest of Us Should Take to Prepare for Our Vacations

Interesting Stanley Bing column in the July 7th issue of Fortune.

Surprisingly, given Bing's blog and the fact that so much other Fortune content is searchable and available, I had trouble finding an electronic version of the article to point people too; unfortunately, the version I did find is not shareable. For example, the archive of Bing's columns in Fortune are listed through 2007; this being the middle of 2008, I think someone has fallen down on the job.

Nonetheless, for those who have already taken or have yet to take their summer vacation, here are some key thoughts:

• First, Bing admitted to himself that he's "a digiholic. ... That I was powerless over the BlackBerry and, to a lesser extent in my case, the cellphone and laptop, and that as a result my life had become unbearable."
• He then came to believe "there was a power that was greater than my own ambition," including silence. "Remember silence?" Bing asks.
• Bing suggests being present as you walk though each day. "That's harder than it sounds," he observes. "Go by yourself to a diner. Order something you like. Sit and eat it without e-mailing, text-messaging, or calling anybody."
• Bing also discussed the fact that he tried to reconnect with people he had lost touch with over the years but "didn't even know it" because of his 200 e-mails a day and "virtual" friends across many social networks. The problem (until now, he claims) is that he "twittered and texted and kept myself busy indeed, my mind occupied with junk."

After going through these four steps, Bing writes, he is at peace with himself.

Although he notes, "I just hope I don't miss any really important calls, you know? Did you hear if our merger went through?"