I picked on a couple of news releases to show as examples in a lecture this morning. (This was unrehearsed and unscripted as news is unpredictable).
I couldn’t disguise my dismay at this announcement. How can anyone present an agreement signed on 19 January as news today (31 January)? News about China is topical, so I had hopes. But it’s old news. It’s dead. Done and dusted.
Contrast it with this example of live press office work from the Maritime and Coastguard agency. Two ships had collided in the English Channel overnight and both crews were removed to safety. Imagine working through the night to verify the facts of the story (the names of the ships, the numbers of crew), under pressure from rolling news and in the knowledge of the communications mistakes made following the West Virginia mine accident. Impressive work.
PR Studies 
How right you are. In November one of our clients (Softalk) was in the Deloitte Fast 50 awards. You don’t know your rank in advance. We wrote the release in advance and issued it first thing the following morning. It was on my PDA as we had considered sending it out from the dinner table on the night. All we had to to do was drop in the result (14th – we’d guessed at 45!).
What surprised me was watching some of the other companies on the list issuing their releases up to three weeks later!