Earned Media vs. Press Releases: What’s the Difference?

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A press release and an earned media story can start from the same piece of news and end up as very different things. The difference is not the topic — it is the voice, the format, and who decides whether it gets published.

A press release announces news in the company’s own voice. It is written by or for the company, structured as an announcement, and distributed as one. An earned media story is written as an editorial piece about the brand — the kind of article a journalist would produce — and publishers decide whether to run it.

Understanding the distinction helps a business choose the right tool, because the two serve different purposes and produce different results.

The press release: your announcement, your voice

A press release is a formal announcement. It follows a set structure: a headline stating the news, a location and date line, a few paragraphs of detail, a quote from someone in the company, and a standard closing paragraph about the business.

Its strengths are real:

• Control. The company writes the exact words, including its own framing of the news.
• Speed and simplicity. The format is standard, so a release can be prepared and distributed quickly.
• A public record. The release documents the announcement in the company’s own words, on the record.

Its limits are just as real. A press release is recognisably the company talking about itself. Journalists receive large numbers of them and use most as raw material at best. Readers who encounter a release directly can see it is an announcement, and judge it accordingly. And distribution is not publication: sending a release to outlets does not mean any outlet will run it, or write about the news at all.

Press releases still have a clear job — announcing genuine news cleanly and formally. Our press release distribution service exists for exactly that purpose.

The earned media story: editorial about your brand

An earned media story starts from the same facts but is built differently. Instead of announcing, it tells: it develops the facts into a journalist-style editorial story about the brand — with context, an angle a publisher’s readers would care about, and a narrative rather than a bulletin.

The differences from a press release are concrete:

• Voice. The release speaks as the company (“we are pleased to announce”). The earned media story speaks about the company, in the third person, the way a journalist would.
• Purpose. The release exists to state news. The story exists to be worth reading — the news sits inside a piece a publisher can run as content for its audience.
• The deciding step. A release is published wherever the company places it. An earned media story is distributed to publishers, and each publisher decides whether to pick it up. That decision is what makes the resulting coverage earned, as explained in our guide to what earned media is.
• What it can produce. When publishers run the story, the results can include brand mentions, editorial pickups, news coverage, backlinks to the brand’s site, and citations in AI answers — followed by a coverage report recording what actually ran.

That last point needs the same honesty as the first ones: distribution is not publication. Publishers decide what to publish, so coverage, backlinks, and citations are possible outcomes of earned media work — never guaranteed ones.

Side by side

Who is speaking? In a press release, the company. In an earned media story, an editorial voice writing about the company.

What is the format? A structured announcement with a company quote. Versus a story written for a publisher’s readers.

Who decides it runs? A press release runs wherever it is placed or posted. An earned media story runs only where a publisher chooses it.

How does a reader see it? As the company’s own announcement. Versus as coverage — content from the publisher, not from the brand.

What does the brand control? The release: the exact wording. The earned story: the facts and material provided at the start — after that, the publisher’s decision governs.

Which one does a business need?

It depends on the job.

Choose a press release when there is a clear, factual announcement to put on the record — a launch, an appointment, an opening — and the priority is stating it accurately in the company’s own words.

Choose earned media when the goal is coverage: being featured, mentioned, and linked to by publishers, in a form readers treat as editorial rather than as an announcement. That is the work our earned media service is built for: find the story in the facts, write it as editorial, distribute it, and report what publishers picked up.

Some businesses use both — a release to put the news on record, and an earned media story to give publishers something they can run as a story rather than a bulletin. The two are not competitors. They are different instruments, and the mistake is expecting one to do the other’s job.

Frequently asked questions

Is a press release a form of earned media?

Not by itself. A press release is an announcement in the company’s own voice. If a journalist uses it as the basis for their own story, that story is earned media — but the release itself is material the company produced and distributed, not coverage it earned.

Which is better for getting backlinks?

Earned media, when publishers pick the story up, because links come from editorial articles on publisher sites. A press release posted to distribution sites is not the same thing. Neither can be guaranteed — publishers decide what to publish and what to link to.

Can the same news be used for both?

Yes. The same facts can support a press release announcing the news and an earned media story written about it editorially. They differ in voice and purpose, not in the underlying facts.

Does distributing a press release guarantee coverage?

No. Distribution puts the release in front of outlets; it does not make any outlet publish it or write about it. The same applies to earned media distribution — the pickup is always the publisher’s decision, which is why our coverage report records what actually ran.