Why Good Product Marketers Think Like Internal Journalists

If you want to be a strategic product marketer, you need to act like an internal journalist.

That might not be the first comparison that comes to mind. After all, PMMs are expected to ship assets, run launches, and support revenue. But if you are not also asking questions, gathering context, and connecting insights across the company, then you are only doing part of the job.

The best product marketers I have worked with do not treat their work as a handoff. They treat it as a discovery process. And like any good journalist, they know the story is rarely found in the first quote or the most polished answer. It is found by listening deeply, asking better questions, and noticing what is not being said.

Start With Questions, Not Outputs

Product marketers are often given deliverables. Create a one-pager. Write the positioning. Build a deck. But if you jump straight into execution without understanding the landscape, you risk repeating what others have said without interrogating whether it is true or useful.

This is where acting like a journalist comes in.

Ask more questions. What is the real problem we are solving? Why does this matter now? How do we know that is true? What have customers actually said about it? What does the data suggest, and what does it not tell us?

When you treat your role as collaborative instead of transactional, you uncover insights that other teams may have missed. You spot inconsistencies. You clarify assumptions. And you build messaging that reflects reality instead of reinforcing internal echo chambers.

Co-Workers Are Not Just Stakeholders. They Are Sources.

You are not just collaborating with Sales, Product, or Customer Success. You are gathering intel from them.

Each person you work with has a perspective shaped by their function, their experience, and the specific conversations they are having every day. Sales might have great insights from recent calls. Product might have deep knowledge of the roadmap. Success might hear about gaps in onboarding.

But no one person sees the whole picture. That is your job.

In one of my earlier roles, I was working at a large B2B enterprise with a fragmented set of stakeholders. Each one had a completely different view of the product’s value, shaped by their tenure, background, and daily focus. If I had stopped at the first few interviews, I would have walked away with a narrow and probably inaccurate message.

Instead, I treated each of them as a source. I asked questions. I let them tell their version of the story. And over time, I started to see the common threads that pulled their perspectives together. That thread became the foundation for our messaging. It resonated not because it was flashy, but because it was true to the business.

You Are Responsible for the Bigger Picture

A journalist’s job is not just to quote a source. It is to create a coherent story from competing inputs.

That is what great product marketers do, too.

You will get different answers depending on who you ask. Your job is not to pick a favorite or average them out. Your job is to identify patterns. Look for what keeps coming up. Watch for contradictions. Pay attention to what the customer experience tells you that internal teams might miss.

When you do that, your messaging becomes more than just copy. It becomes a reflection of the business. It builds alignment. It earns credibility. And it helps teams understand not just what you are saying, but why it matters.

Product marketing is not about having the loudest voice in the room. It is about asking the questions no one else is asking, listening carefully to what others say, and creating clarity in the middle of all of it.

If you want to be more strategic, start by being more curious.