I would like to answer this question first with another question. Why would you just focus your attention to journalists, are they your target market? But anyways, journalists care.

Press Releases are made to help journalists write their articles. I remembered in my internship as a journalism student, I was asked to write a news story out of one's press release. I didn't have other information available but just the press release itself and it was really hard. My write up was not that good. My trainer told me, I should have done this and that, which I know I could.

But journalists, as much as possible want to present the two sides of the story, the company's and their target market, the administration and the opposition, and any views that matter to the story. So they make interviews, do research, etc. And to make a news article interesting, they add quotations from anyone they think who has the authority to talk about that subject. Therefore, if they are about to write news articles that are web related, press releases wouldn't be enough since they only get the point of view of the website owners, or the internet related company. They would not be able to make factual observations like, "the launch is received well by the online community", "the website receive a lot of criticisms", "most users are not satisfied with the new features"..... something like that. A true journalist should not write such sentences if he doesn't have any basis. And where can he get the facts? On Social Media Sites where the community is active.

If you are a business owner, and thinking of adding the Social Media in one of your concerns, journalists would not just benefit from it, but you as well. Because through the use of social media you will be able to get closer to your target market. And would receive feedbacks faster.