Industry Insights: Exclusive, Embargo, And More Terms To Avoid Using In Pitches To Journalists Unless Using Them Correctly (Part 1)

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Happy Saturday!

Hope you are enjoying your last gasps of summer…I had a beautiful night last night doing a tasting at a soon-to-open restaurant (with dear friends!), and now I’m spending today doing some very-necessary life administration.

But today’s email, I wanted to give some space to something we chat about often: Journalists get A LOT of emails.

A fair portion of those emails are those that use terms such as "embargo," "exclusive," "opportunity," "partnership." The problem is -- a lot of people using those terms are using them wrong.

So, today, I thought we could go into what these terms and other ones we often see actually mean to us, and why you shouldn't be using them if that's not what is going on -- and the dangers of misusing a term when pitching a journalist.

The ensuing chain of events, without any exaggeration, could be dangerous not only for your relationship with that journalist, but their relationship with their editor and audience as well.