Making News Releases Useful

I try not to rant here at Slaw, but today, I am making an exception. Among all the political hoopla, famine, flooding and war, I am choosing to rant about something that with very little effort is easily remedied.
News Releases.

I follow news releases using RSS feeds for several levels of government. There is little that annoyes me as much as a news release that has no information in it. For example, Government of Canada Travel Updates.

Here is the headline from the News Releases page on the Canada News Centre:

09:25 ADT (Tuesday, Apr 19, 2011) – Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada

TRAVEL UPDATES – TUESDAY, APRIL 19, 2011

The Consular Affairs Bureau of Foreign Affairs and International Trade Canada publishes information on safety and security conditions abroad. Following is a list of changes made to Current Issues and Travel Reports released in the last 24 hours. This list is subject to change. Please visit www.voyage.gc.ca for further information…….

This is the VERY SAME text that is in every single news release update to the travel reports. There have been 11 updates from April 1 to 19, 2011.

Would it be so hard to say what country is being updated? The link in the news release always takes you to the same website. There is a list of changes at the website for easy viewing which includes the USEFUL information – why is the news release generic?

2011-4-19 Spain
2011-4-18 Argentina – Côte d’Ivoire (Ivory Coast)* – Kazakhstan – Kyrgyz Republic* – Liberia* – Sierra Leone* – Syria* – Tajikistan* – Uganda* – United Arab Emirates

Please feel free to send an email to voyage@international.gc.ca along with this post. One small change in news release content, one less click for humankind.

I am sure that this applies to legal information in some context somewhere.
Happy Tuesday.