Press Release Mad Libs

I was reading a reprinted Caltech press release in Caltech News and it occurred to me that there's probably some skeleton document along the following lines that is used for most new press releases:


[School] Gets [fucking huge amount of money] from [acronym] to [verb] [scientific-sounding buzzword]

[Location]--[Organization] ([acronym]), a component of [another organization] ([acronym]), has awarded a [same fucking huge amount of money as above] grant for creation of a [name of research group] at [school].

According to [name of professor], the [name of benefactor] Professor of [subject] at [school] and principal investigator of the [time period] program, the goal will be to [verb] and [verb] every [scientific object] in [another scientific object]--that is, [terse definition of scientific object whose definition we learned in high school or earlier].

The work will be performed together with co-investigators [name of researcher] and [name of researcher] from the [department, division, or research group on campus], and [name of researcher], an assistant professor of [name of discipline] and [name of discipline].

"We will combine real-time analysis of [scientific thing] on a [size] scale with the ability to [verb] [plural noun] of interest," [name of principal investigator] says.

Initially, the research team will focus on [scientific noun that is much more specific than the one the team is getting money to study], which is ideal for this type of work because of [scientific thing] and its [another scientific thing].

"Our goal is to create [buzzword in single quotes]" [name of one of the other researchers] says. "This will be a computer model of [cheesy analogy] that transforms a/an [noun] into a/an [noun]."

"There will be an enormous payoff in new information about how [noun] works at the [scientific adjective] level," [name of principal investigator] adds.

The researchers will use new "[scientific buzzword]" imaging and [multi-word scientific adjective] tools invented by [name of investigator] and [name of investigator] and new [scientific adjective] methods being developed in the [name of investigator] lab to analyze [multi-word scientific noun] and [noun] in the [adjective] [plural noun]. They will digitize this [adjective] [noun] on a [adjective] scale by capturing [number] of time-lapse videos as the [plural noun] [verb].

Once the approach is worked out on [same test case as above], it will also be applied to the [slightly less trivial test case] to make a "[silly scientific buzzword]," because [adjective] [plural noun] [verb] in a fashion very similar to [what they are actually getting funding to study].

The [school] grant is part of a [large amount of money] grant portfolio awarded by the [original acronym] for funding interdisciplinary work in [scientific adjective] research. The [original acronym] is best known for spearheading the [multi-word scientific adjectve in capital letters] Project, which completely [verb; past tense] the [adjective] [noun] of [plural noun].

Now that the [noun] of the [noun] for [plural noun] and many other [plural noun] has been determined, the challenge ahead is to figure out how the [noun] [verb] during [noun] and [noun] which is the goal of the [yet another acronym] ([what this acronym stands for]) program.

"The [most recent acronym] program is vital to our efforts to apply innovative [adjective] tools and technologies to the study of [adjective] [name of discipline]," said [original acronym] Director [name]. "By fostering collaboration among researchers from many different disciplines, [original acronym] aims to encourage innovation and build a powerful new framework for exploring [adjective] [noun] and [noun]."


If you want to compare this to the original press release, go here.

And if you ever need to write your own press release, I suggest you start with the document here. With this in hand, you'll be well on your way to a career in public relations!