The news value of Dutch corporate press releases as a predictor of corporate agenda building power

•75% of all corporate press releases is ignored by national press.•Media select press releases for their newsworthiness.•Controversy, surprise and negative impact are newsworthy.•Added incentives hardly improve chance for media attention.

This study focuses on explaining agenda building power of corporate press releases. The purpose of the study is to investigate to what extent news factor theory can be applied to predict whether a press release generates media attention or not. A content analysis of 823 press releases from 30 of the largest Dutch corporations reveals that the news factors surprise, controversy, impact-negative consequences and elite organization have increase a press release's chance for succession. Furthermore, press releases on the topics financial performance, employees & management and organizational issues have a similar effect. The study shows that news factor theory can be applied successfully in the field of public relations and media relations and suggests that the variety of effective news factors depends on the news genre.