2. 2. 2. 2. 2.

Argh.

In prep for this weekend's visit by Larry Jaffe to the "from out of the city" podcast, I set up a press release with PRWEB, the free internet-based news release service I've used seemingly forever (base news releases are free...you can get more bells and whistles for $$...but it is still a good deal.)

They take a look at your release and give it a score on a scale from zero to five as part of the treatment.

Five means it is newsworthy, well written and engrossing.

Zero means you basically threw up on the keyboard and pressed "enter".

I checked back a few minutes later and my rating was...a "2".

I never get "2"'s...ever. So I sat down and re-attacked it, edited it, found a typo, restructred a couple overly-wordy sentences and resubmitted.

A "2".

That's not right. I pulled the thing apart, changed the title, reworded a couple of passages for passive voice avoidance and resubmitted.

A "2".

I pulled the text, ran it through a grammar checker, read it outloud, shifted a few clauses and made a change to the keywords.

A "2".

Now I'm afraid to make any more changes, for fear it might go in reverse!

The ironic thing is, I never put money on a press release if it isn't at least a "4"...not worth it, so in the end they lose as well as I do, but I'm going to go back in a moment (since my date for this afternoon seems to have joined everone else I know in the pandimensional void I cannot see into or hear out of) and try one more time.

Maybe they just don't like Larry Jaffe?