You won’t believe Number 12!

In the mid-90s, when a newspaper editor handed me my first Associated Press Stylebook (now, miraculously in its 57th Edition), it was like being given a journalistic Rosetta Stone. Suddenly, everything made sense, thanks to its rigid rules, comforting Oxford commas, and the knowledge that “e-mail” would one day shed its hyphen. It felt like a rite of passage—your backstage pass to the messy, ink-streaked world of journalism.

Among other valuable road rules, the book included a glossary of insider jargon— terms that made you feel like you were part of a secret society where deadlines were myths, coffee was religion, and stories were currency.

But times have changed. Print has (mostly) died, TikTok dances now pass as news, and any “dog-eared” AP Stylebook has long been replaced by Grammarly. So, in the spirit of modern (ahem) journalism, here’s an updated glossary, retooled for our brave new world of clicks, algorithms, and endless doomscrolling.

1. Advertorial: These days, technically, everything in a newspaper.
2. Angle: The mental gymnastics reporters perform to make a cat rescue story somehow relevant to global warming.
3. Clickbait: Headlines written for the sole purpose of making you angry enough to engage.
4. Column: An opinion piece by someone with whom you only half-agree but whose writing is snarky enough to keep you reading.
5. Copyright: The law protecting your genius article from being plagiarized—except on Reddit.
6. Deadline: The imaginary time journalists are supposed to submit their work.
7. Fact-checking: The thing everyone claims to do but nobody has time for.
8. Feature: The cat video of journalism.
9. Freelancer: A contractor without a contract.
10. Inverted Pyramid: A storytelling style where the ending is so boring you’ll never read that far.
11. Investigative Journalism: Any story that has a chance of getting a reporter locked inside the trunk of a car.
12. Listicle: Journalism for readers with the attention span of a goldfish (like this).
13. Masthead: The newspaper’s staff listing where you learn how understaffed they are.
14. Paywall: That frustrating pop-up between you and the 800 words you won’t finish reading (unless it’s this one).
15. Stringer: A freelancer who does everything a staffer does, minus the benefits, job security, or sense of belonging.

And so, onward journalism continues, devolving into an eternal scroll as we press on because someone has to write the first draft of history (and hopefully, someone else will copyedit it). — DH