An arrangement in which a company gives one specific publication or journalist sole early access to a story, in exchange for that outlet typically providing stronger, more prominent coverage than they might give to a story shared broadly with competitors.
Why it matters
Exclusives can produce meaningfully better placement and depth of coverage from the one outlet involved, trading off the broader simultaneous coverage an embargo strategy would otherwise produce — the right choice depends on whether depth or breadth of initial coverage matters more for a given story.
In a sentence
"We gave the funding story to one publication as an exclusive, which resulted in a much more in-depth feature than we'd likely have gotten sharing the same news across ten outlets at once."
Related terms
- Often confused with: Embargo (see above).