How journalists talk

This week a very experienced PR pro asked me for some journalism jargon she could use in her pitches to “speak journalists’ language.”

This indeed can make your pitches stand out a little better, but the risks may outweigh the gains.

First, here are some terms that legacy print journos use, their meanings, and how you could fit them into a pitch:

Stuff – a journalist’s collective work. “I’ve been following your stuff on AI-driven power needs . . .”

Piece – a given article. “Saw yesterday’s piece on . . .”

Get (noun) – a hard-to-find source or fact. “Great get yesterday with the Johnson interview.”

Turn – producing a story, usually quickly. “You turned that Google announcement fast . . .”

But here’s the thing. You still meet the bar for credibility using more commonplace terms like: work, article, interview or published.

Last week a political candidate made an X post related to American football and used the phrase “runs a mean pick six.” In football parlance, that makes no sense.

Obviously, the candidate’s social media manager should have acknowledged they weren’t comfortable with football slang and asked someone else to ghostwrite that one for their boss. Instead, they ended up deleting the post, but not before it was screenshotted and mocked (that’s the internet for you).

So unless you feel really conversant in journalism jargon, you’re better off staying in your lane so you don’t come off as trying too hard, or worse, create a distraction from the story you’re promoting.