Associated Press Press Release: How to Get Your News on AP News

"Getting on AP" means two very different things, and sellers love to blur them. We checked apnews.com page by page on September 14, 2026. Here is what an Associated Press press release actually is, and what it isn't.

Disclosure: I work on RedPress, and we sell AP News press release placements. Every fact below is checkable on the live site.

TL;DR

AP News runs a press release section fed by 21 distribution partners. Each release is labeled "Paid Content".
Release pages are noindex,nofollow. Don't buy one for SEO.
The value is credibility: a citable apnews.com URL with your announcement on it.
AP journalism is a separate route. It is free, and you get there by pitching the newsroom.

Two things people mean by "AP press release"

A page in the AP News press release section. You pay a distributor, and your release appears at apnews.com/press-release/<partner>/... under that partner's hub.
AP reporting. An AP journalist writes a story, and member newspapers may carry it. You can't buy this.

Most confusion, and most overpromising, comes from treating #1 as #2.

What the section looks like

The index at apnews.com/press-releases links to partner hubs. On the day we checked, it listed 21 partners: REDPRESS, ACCESS Newswire, Bitwire, Business Wire, EIN Presswire | Newsmatics, EZ Newswire, GetNews, GlobeNewswire, KISS PR, Korewire, MarketersMedia, Media OutReach, NewMediaWire, news aktuell, Newsfile, PR Newswire, PR.com, PRNEWS.IO, Prodigy News, Send2Press and Wieck.

Services that sell placements in this section include those partners and RedPress, which arranges its placements through one of AP's press release partners.

Each release page says, word for word:

"PRESS RELEASE: Paid Content from [partner]. The AP news staff was not involved in its creation."

The part nobody mentions: noindex

We checked the robots tags. Release pages and partner hubs carry <meta name="robots" content="noindex,nofollow">. The main index page does not.

So when someone promises "a do-follow backlink from AP" or "rankings from AP News", that is not what the page does. What you actually get:

A page on apnews.com that you, your customers and journalists can open and cite.
Whatever wider distribution the partner itself provides.
A credibility signal in sales conversations, as long as you describe it accurately.

How to get actual AP coverage

AP's contact page has a "Submit a press release to our newsroom" option. Treat it as a pitch to journalists, not a request to publish.
Lead with hard news: data, a regulatory decision, a deal or an event with real public interest.
Write in AP style so a reporter can lift facts cleanly. We wrote up the AP style rules that matter for press releases.
AP Daybooks list major upcoming events by state. They are useful if your event is genuinely newsworthy.

Cost

One seller's packages page listed an AP News release at $125 in August 2026. We list ours at $140 (as of September 2026) with a 5-day delivery window. At these prices, the deciding question isn't price. It is whether the seller tells you the truth about the label and the noindex before you pay.

Red flags

"Do-follow backlink from AP."
"On the AP wire to thousands of outlets."
"Guaranteed pickup by AP reporters or member papers."
No word about the "Paid Content" label until after checkout.

How to talk about it

Good: "Our announcement is published in the AP News press release section."
Misleading: "Featured by the Associated Press" or "AP reports".

I wrote the long version, with an AP-style release skeleton and a "what it is vs. what it isn't" table, here: Associated Press press release guide. Our AP News placement page lists what is included.

Question for the group: has anyone gotten real AP coverage from a cold pitch? What made the reporter bite?