Press releases are no longer mechanisms to induce journalists to produce news stories. They ARE news stories. A lot of people in this industry read press releases directly because they get them distributed to their email via the Internet, flagged in automated news alerts based on keywords.

The point is that your opening paragraph should not follow time-honored conventions and bore the pants off people by droning on about the company and its empty-suited market positioning statement. The leading paragraph is your opening statement ... the big news .. the stuff that gets people excited, gets them reading on and, ideally, sees them going to your Website or giving someone at your company a call.

This article from pressdoh provides good insight as to how to write better copy:

http://pressdooh.com/blog