Transmitting some of my good-ol' WS lessons This media-training lesson from 20 years ago is still very much a thing. When I was a VP at Moody’s (1997 - 2003), one piece of media training stuck with me: certain investigative journalists would write “people familiar with the matter,” then plant a hint elsewhere in the same article about the real source or circle. The goal wasn’t just protecting the source. It was signaling to the rest of the press that the information was solid. That practice has not disappeared. The phrase “people familiar with the matter” (and its cousins: “people with knowledge of the talks,” “two people briefed on the matter”) remains the standard anonymous attribution in "elite" journalism — New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, Reuters, Washington Post. You still see it daily in finance, politics, tech, and investigations. What has evolved is the craft around it. Reporters try to be as specific as possible without naming names: “a senior executive who reviewed the draft,” “two people who attended the board meeting,” “a person briefed by the company’s counsel.” The more precise the description, the more weight the claim carries. And the decoding is exactly how the rest of the press judges whether a scoop is credible and worth matching. Going forward, you will not be able to read any of these articles without remembering this.