Issue 14

“The guy’s lucky”—great quote but a weird choice for an official release.

Practical PIO analyzes real social media posts to help you improve your communications. All identifying details are blurred or removed because our goal is growth, not criticism.

Steel beams weighing 42,000 pounds shifted forward in a crash and pierced the truck cab. The driver crawled out a window unharmed. That’s an incredible story—but the release gets sidetracked by what seems to be an emergency management coordinator explaining his own role in third person. The miracle becomes secondary to justifying why he was there.

Full text

Here’s the full text so you can follow along (or in case the image doesn’t load):

✅ What works well

✅ Follows inverted pyramid structure... mostly. The release starts with the outcome (driver escaped injury), gives the dramatic details (beams piercing cab), then moves to response details. The structure is generally right, even if it loses focus later.

✅ The quotations are conversational and memorable. “He crawled out the passenger-side window” and “The guy’s lucky” are exactly the kind of human, genuine quotes that make a story stick. They’re brief and paint a vivid picture. (But see “What could be improved” below ...)

✅ The dramatic details are specific. The 42,000-pound load, steel beams piercing the cab, crawling out a window—these details help readers visualize just how lucky the driver was.

✅ The timeline is clear. Crash called in at 8:23 a.m., highway reopened at 12:10 p.m.—readers get a sense of the incident’s duration.

🛠️ What could be improved

Big picture

🛠️ Don’t make yourself the story. The second half of this release focuses on what the emergency management coordinator (EMC) did—acquiring resources, getting a tow truck, staging at command post “in case fire police units needed anything.” This reads like someone justifying their presence rather than informing the public. Readers don’t need to know the EMC staged at command post. They need to know what happened to the driver.

🛠️ Clarify who’s posting and why—and stay in your lane. The posting agency (county OEM) isn’t listed among the responding agencies, yet the EMC is the primary voice explaining his role. This feels like self-dispatching or jumping a call. If the county OEM didn’t formally respond, why is this their story to tell? And if they did respond, why aren’t they listed with [Police Department] and the fire departments? Readers are left wondering whose incident this is and if the person being quoted is talking about himself in third person.

🛠️ “The guy’s lucky” is great color—but is it appropriate for an official? As a quote captured by a reporter, that’s gold. But in an official release where an emergency management coordinator is making a judgment call about someone’s luck? That feels unprofessional. Save the conversational observations for media interviews, not official statements.

🛠️ Consider your audience before using regional terminology. “Fire police units” is specific to certain regions. For a local audience, it’s probably fine. But ask yourself: does being that specific serve the story? Would “first responders” or “emergency personnel” work just as well without potential confusion?

Nitty gritty

🛠️ Use active voice. “The crash was first called into [County] 911” and “the highway was reopened” use passive voice. Say “Someone called 911 at 8:23 a.m. to report the crash” and “Crews cleared the scene and reopened the highway at 12:10 p.m.”

🛠️ Use AP Style for time. “8:23 am” and “12:10 pm” should be “8:23 a.m.” and “12:10 p.m.”—lowercase with periods and spaces.

🛠️ Fix the run-on sentence. “All equipment cleared the scene and the highway was reopened at 12:10 pm” needs a comma before the conjunction: “All equipment cleared the scene, and the highway was reopened at 12:10 p.m.”

🛠️ Use proper typographic punctuation. The release uses straight tick marks (' " ") instead of proper curly quotation marks (’ “ ”) and apostrophes. This is a small detail, but it’s the difference between polished professional writing and something that looks like it was typed on a typewriter. Most word processors and content management systems handle this automatically. If yours doesn’t, it’s worth fixing. It’s a telltale sign of using certain artificial intelligence tools—or at least not paying attention to detail. Some tools have automated ability to fix this, or usually retyping the punctuation marks will trigger them to convert automatically.

Practical PIO version

Here’s a version that keeps the focus on the driver and the incident:

Teaching note: Notice how this version keeps the focus on the driver’s miraculous escape. The operational support is acknowledged in one sentence—enough to give credit without overwhelming the story. The EMC’s role doesn’t appear because readers don’t need to know who coordinated the tow truck. And the conversational “guy’s lucky” observation is gone, keeping the tone professional while still conveying the dramatic nature of the escape.

Have you struggled with when to include your own agency’s role versus keeping focus on the incident? How do you decide what operational details matter to the public? Hit reply and tell me—I read every email.

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