How to Tell Your Expert Story Without Sounding Like a Press Release

I've edited hundreds of interviews with genuinely brilliant people, and I've watched a surprising number of them accidentally make themselves boring. Not because they lack anything to say — they're experts, they have more to say than almost anyone — but because the moment a recorder turns on, they switch into a register I've come to think of as "press-release voice." Everything becomes cutting-edge, world-class, and mission-driven, and all the interesting texture drains out.

This piece is about how not to do that. Whether you're talking to us or to any journalist, these are the habits that turn an expert into a great interview subject — and a forgettable one into a quotable one.

1. Be specific, always

Press-release voice loves abstraction: "We leverage innovative solutions to drive impact." That sentence contains no information. Nobody can picture it, argue with it, or remember it. The antidote is relentless specificity. Don't say your work is innovative — describe the exact thing you did that had never been done, and what broke the first ten times you tried it.

Specificity is also what makes you credible. Vague claims sound like marketing. Concrete details sound like someone who was actually there.

Vague claims sound like marketing. Concrete details sound like someone who was actually there.

2. Admit what's hard

The instinct to present everything as a triumph is understandable and completely counterproductive. Readers don't connect with flawless success stories; they connect with real ones. The most memorable thing you can do in an interview is tell the truth about a difficulty — the experiment that failed for a year, the assumption that turned out to be wrong, the thing you still don't understand.

Admitting difficulty doesn't make you look weak. It makes you look honest and, paradoxically, more authoritative. Only someone who really knows a field can tell you precisely where it gets hard.

3. Use one analogy, not five adjectives

When you need to explain something technical, resist the urge to pile on impressive-sounding modifiers. Reach for a single clean analogy instead. A good analogy does more work than a paragraph of jargon, and it's the thing a reader will repeat to someone else later. The experts who get quoted most are almost always the ones who can make a hard idea click with an everyday comparison.

4. Have a point of view

Neutrality is safe and dull. You've earned opinions through years of work — share them. What's overhyped in your field? What does everyone believe that you think is wrong? What would you tell a smart newcomer to ignore? A well-argued opinion from a real expert is journalistic gold, and it's the opposite of a press release, which by design offends no one and says nothing.

You don't have to be reckless. "I think the consensus on X is mistaken, and here's the specific reason" is both a strong point of view and a responsible one.

5. Cut the mission statement

Nobody was ever moved by a sentence containing the word "synergy." If your organization has a genuine purpose, it will come through in the specific things you describe doing — you don't need to announce it. Let the work imply the mission. The moment you start reciting the mission directly, a reader's eyes glaze and their trust drops a notch.

6. Answer the question you were asked

Media training often teaches people to "pivot to their message" no matter the question. It's transparent and it's irritating. If a journalist asks you something specific, answer it. If you have a point you want to make, make it in addition, not instead. Interviews where the subject actually engages read as conversations; interviews where the subject dodges read as evasions, and readers notice.

7. Let yourself sound like a person

The best quotes I've ever published sounded like something a smart friend would say at dinner, not something approved by a committee. Humour, the occasional aside, a moment of genuine enthusiasm or frustration — these are the details that make a reader feel they've met you. Press-release voice sands all of that off. Keep it.

8. Prepare, but don't script

There's a difference between preparing for an interview and scripting one, and it's worth getting right. Preparation is good: think in advance about the two or three ideas you most want to land, and dig up the specific example or number that supports each. That way, when the conversation gets there, you have something concrete to reach for instead of a vague generality.

Scripting is different, and it backfires. When someone has memorized answers, you can hear it — the cadence goes flat, the eye contact drifts, and the moment you ask a question slightly off from what they rehearsed, they either force their script in sideways or freeze. Interviews are conversations, and conversations can't be memorized. Come with your key points and your examples, then let the talk breathe. The interviewer's job is to steer; yours is to be genuinely present.

9. Trust the process, then let go

A subtle thing sabotages a lot of smart people: they try to edit themselves in real time. Mid-sentence, they're already worrying about how a phrase might look in print, so they hedge, qualify, and flatten everything into safe mush. Don't. That's what draft review is for. You'll get to check every fact and fix anything that misrepresents you before a word is published, so during the interview itself you can afford to be expansive and think out loud. Say the vivid thing. If it doesn't survive review, no harm done — but usually the vivid thing is exactly what makes the piece.

A note on why this matters for you

This isn't only about making our job easier — though it does. It's about getting more out of the coverage. A piece full of specific, honest, opinionated, human material does far more for your reputation than a piece full of polished nothing. People trust the expert who sounds like they're telling the truth, and they forget the one who sounds like a brochure.

And you don't have to get it perfect on your own. A good interviewer will draw the specifics out of you, and you'll see the draft before it runs. The main thing is to walk in willing to be real. If you can do that, the rest is our job.

A short before-and-after

To make all of this concrete, here's the same idea said two ways. The press-release version: "Our team leverages cutting-edge methodologies to deliver best-in-class outcomes for our stakeholders." Read it twice and you still don't know what they do. Now the human version, from an actual subject describing the identical work: "We were spending three weeks on a calculation that should have taken an afternoon, so we built a tool to do it overnight — and then discovered the overnight version was catching mistakes we'd been making by hand for years." Same achievement. One sentence is forgettable corporate wallpaper; the other is a small story you could repeat to a friend. The difference isn't intelligence or eloquence. It's the willingness to be specific and a little vulnerable about the actual work.

Every one of the habits above is really just a way of getting to that second sentence — of clearing away the reflexive polish so the real, quotable, human thing underneath can come through.

If you'd like to know what else makes someone worth interviewing, my colleague Sophie wrote the companion piece: What Makes a Great Interview Subject.