Press Releases, Newswires & PR Glossary of Terms

The language of public relations hasn’t kept pace with how news is actually discovered, interpreted, and trusted today. Many commonly used PR terms were defined decades ago for a media environment that no longer exists.

This glossary brings those terms up to date — combining traditional PR concepts with modern realities such as search engines, AI systems, structured data, and algorithmic discovery. Where legacy definitions fall short, we explain why, and what actually matters now.

We start with modern AI-era terminology because these concepts now determine how news is discovered, interpreted, and cited—traditional PR terms follow for context.

AI, search & retrieval fundamentals

Answer Economy
An information ecosystem where AI systems retrieve, synthesize, and deliver direct answers to users, reducing the need for traditional search, clicks, and website visits — and shifting value toward trusted, structured, machine-readable content.

Hallucinations (AI):
A failure mode in which an artificial intelligence system generates output that appears accurate and authoritative but is factually incorrect, unverifiable, or not grounded in its training data or retrieved sources.

Large language model (LLM)
A probabilistic language system trained on massive datasets to generate human-like text. LLMs do not learn facts in real time; they generate responses using patterns and retrieved external information.

Knowledge cutoff
The point in time after which an LLM’s internal training data stops. Anything newer must be accessed through retrieval systems rather than model memory.

Retrieval-augmented generation (RAG)
A system in which an AI retrieves live, indexed content and feeds it into its context window before generating a response. This is how modern AI systems answer questions about current events.

Context window
The limited amount of text an AI can consider at one time when generating a response. Only retrieved content within this window influences the output.

Vectorization
The process of converting words, sentences, or documents into numerical representations that allow AI systems to measure semantic similarity rather than relying on keywords.

Semantic distance
A mathematical measure of how closely related two concepts are within a vector space. Smaller distances increase the likelihood of retrieval.

Entities, authority & trust

Entity
A clearly defined “thing” such as a company, person, product, or location that search engines and AI systems can identify and distinguish from others.

Entity authority
The level of trust an AI assigns to an entity based on consistency, credibility, topical focus, and validation across the web.

Entity salience
A measure of how strongly an entity is associated with a topic within a piece of content. High salience increases retrievability and citation likelihood.

Human-in-the-Loop (HITL): An AI-assisted workflow in which human editors actively guide, review, and refine machine-generated content to ensure accuracy, context, judgment, and editorial quality while maintaining optimization for search engines and AI retrieval systems.

Knowledge graph
A structured network that maps entities and their relationships. Press releases contribute validation signals that help position brands within these graphs.

Authority signal
A measurable indication that content reinforces a brand’s credibility within a specific topic area. Authority signals accumulate over time through consistency, structure, and third-party validation.

Structured data & technical signals

Structured data
Machine-readable code that explicitly defines what content represents, reducing ambiguity for search engines and AI systems.

JSON-LD
A structured data format that translates human-readable content into machine-readable facts about organizations, authors, and news.

Canonical tag
A signal that identifies the original source of a piece of syndicated content, ensuring authority is consolidated rather than diluted.

Source of truth
The authoritative location AI systems should trust as the origin of a fact, announcement, or definition.

Freshness, cadence & consistency

Query deserves freshness (QDF)
A ranking signal that prioritizes newer content when topics are time-sensitive or actively changing.

Signal decay
The gradual loss of retrievability and authority when a brand stops publishing fresh, consistent content.

28-day rule
A practical guideline based on how search engines and analytics systems evaluate freshness. Brands that go silent longer than roughly 28 days often experience declining visibility and retrievability.

Digital pulse
The consistent rhythm of publishing that signals activity, relevance, and reliability to search engines and AI systems.

Media, journalists & editorial workflow

Beat
A journalist’s defined coverage area, such as an industry, technology, geography, or policy domain. Aligning news with a reporter’s beat increases editorial relevance and accuracy. In modern discovery systems, beats also influence how stories are categorized and retrieved across news and search indexes.

Pitch
A concise, tailored outreach message sent to a journalist explaining why a specific story matters to their audience at a specific moment. In modern PR, pitches support — but do not replace — structured press releases designed for long-term discoverability and AI retrieval.

Exclusive
A strategic agreement to provide a story to a single outlet first. Exclusives are typically reserved for major announcements or high-authority publications and usually include an implied delay before broader distribution occurs.

Embargo
A timing agreement allowing journalists to review unpublished information in advance, with publication restricted until a specific date and time. Embargoes help coordinate coverage while preserving editorial preparation time.

Media advisory
A short, logistics-focused alert inviting press to cover an upcoming event. Media advisories prioritize who, what, when, where, and why — not narrative storytelling — and are commonly used for press conferences, launches, or live demonstrations.

Attribution, disclosure & source control

On the record
Information that may be quoted directly and attributed by name and title. Unless stated otherwise, most media interactions default to on-the-record status.

Off the record
Information shared with the explicit understanding it will not be published or attributed. Because interpretations vary, best practice is to define off-the-record terms clearly before sharing sensitive information.

On background
Information that may be published with negotiated limitations. Typically paraphrased rather than quoted and attributed using general descriptors such as “a source familiar with the matter.”

Not for attribution
Information that may be used by a reporter, but without naming the speaker. Attribution is limited to a general identifier such as “a company spokesperson.”

Press release structure & editorial elements

Press release
A structured, time-bound announcement used to communicate newsworthy information. While historically written for journalists, modern press releases are also engineered for search engines, AI retrieval systems, and long-term authority building.

Lede
The opening sentence or paragraph that frames the story and signals importance. In AI-optimized releases, the lede often contains the core who, what, and when to accelerate indexing and retrieval.

Boilerplate
A standardized “about” section summarizing a company’s mission, offerings, and positioning. In the age of AI, the boilerplate functions as a primary entity definition used by search engines and AI systems to establish brand identity and authority.

Byline
An article or commentary published under the name of an executive or subject-matter expert. Bylines are typically educational or opinion-driven and are used to build credibility, personal authority, and long-term thought leadership.

Media assets & PR infrastructure

Media kit
A centralized collection of brand assets designed to support accurate coverage and reuse. Media kits often include company background, leadership bios, logos, images, press releases, FAQs, reports, awards, and proof points.

Media database
An organized directory of journalists, editors, outlets, and contact details categorized by beat, geography, and relevance. A maintained media database improves pitch accuracy and earned-media efficiency.

Media types & distribution models

Earned media
Visibility gained organically when third parties choose to feature or mention a brand. Examples include interviews, articles, features, and reposts. Earned media functions as third-party validation rather than paid exposure.

Owned media
Channels fully controlled by a brand, such as websites, blogs, newsletters, email campaigns, and brand social profiles. Owned media acts as the long-term source of truth for audiences, search engines, and AI systems.

Paid media
Distribution or visibility purchased on third-party platforms, including sponsored content, native advertising, display ads, and pay-per-click campaigns. Paid media guarantees placement but does not inherently convey trust or authority.

Metrics, visibility & interpretation (AI-era perspective)

Reach
A distribution estimate representing the total number of people who could have been exposed to content based on audience size or network circulation. Reach does not indicate whether anyone actually saw, read, understood, or acted on the content. It is a directional estimate, not a measure of impact or authority.

Impressions
A visibility metric reflecting how many times content was displayed or potentially displayed. Impressions measure exposure, not attention. They do not account for reading, comprehension, engagement, or AI retrieval. In isolation, impressions are a classic vanity metric.

Reads / views
A behavioral metric indicating that content was actively opened or loaded by a user. Reads and views are more meaningful than reach or impressions, but they still do not guarantee comprehension, trust, or downstream impact. Their primary value lies in confirming human engagement.

Engagement
User actions that demonstrate interaction with content, such as time on page, scrolling, sharing, saving, or clicking through to related material. Engagement signals resonance, but remains audience-centric and does not directly measure AI visibility or authority.

eCPC (effective cost per click)
A cost-efficiency metric calculated by dividing total distribution cost by the number of actual clicks or reads generated. eCPC is useful for comparing channels, but it does not capture long-term value such as search authority, AI retrievability, or cumulative entity confidence.

Vanity metrics
High-level exposure metrics — such as reach and impressions — that appear impressive in reports but provide limited insight into real impact. Vanity metrics describe potential visibility, not outcomes, and are easily inflated.

Meaningful visibility
Visibility that results in actual interaction, understanding, and retrievability. Meaningful visibility is reflected through reads, engagement, search presence, and AI citation — not raw exposure counts.

Final perspective

Traditional PR language often focuses on exposure. Modern discovery systems prioritize structure, clarity, freshness, and trust.

This glossary reflects that shift — explaining not just what PR terms used to mean, but how they function now in a world shaped by search engines and AI.

Visibility without retrieval is noise.
Authority without consistency fades.