: Why do news articles and press releases start with date and location? Here's what I'm talking about: PALO ALTO, Calif., January 5, 2016 — Example Inc. today delivered on the promise to

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A dateline must be where the reporter reported from. As an analogue to web publishing, it is a location and timestamp on an article. For example, an earthquake may occur in a remote part of Brazil, and the dateline would be RIO DI JANEIRO if that's where the report was filed from (the reporter sat in an office in Rio and gathered the news and filed the report from there).

If you are filing for AP (Associated Press) or are a member newspaper, you use AP style for datelines. This includes which cities need or don't need state names, what abbreviations to use for states (hint, not postal abbreviations), etc.

Some might see datelines as archaic, but they absolutely serve a purpose in any filed report where the location and time of filing matter.

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The dateline shows when and where the story was written (or filed), not merely where the events occurred. Newspapers and other news services spend a lot of money to send reporters overseas. An overseas dateline tells the reader that they are getting the news from someone who was close to the event, rather than a second-hand account.

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In a news story it is very, very common that you will need to specify the place and the date. A convention that you put it at the beginning of the article is more concisely than working it into the text, and makes it easy to find when people are referring to a newspaper article long after the fact. Sure, you could say, "There was an earthquake in Someville yesterday, January 31, 2016, registering 6.2 on the Richter scale ..." But putting it up front saves a couple of words and probably more important, makes it less likely that you'll forget to say. When you're writing the story, it's obviously "here" and "today", so I can see it being easy to forget to mention that. The reader, of course, may read it days or years from now and could be anywhere.

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I'm pretty sure it originates as a Journalism style. It is a newspaper era journalism technique and ultimately I think its an easy and quick way for journalists to answer two of the important 'W's right off the bat. As soon as you begin reading you know where and when, and the story can focus on explaining the who, what, and why. It saves print.

With all the many forms of media out now, it is not as rigid a tradition as in former generations, but it is still an easy way to shorten the key points of the story if one is to save copy.

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