Joe Nocera from The New York Times is one enviable man. The business columnist finally peeled away the walls of Apple to get an off-the-record conversation with one Steve Jobs about the Apple czar's health, a recent hot topic.

In my nearly four years at PRWeek, there are a few common phrases that I have heard repeated by PR pros so often that they have become tired cliches.

We are at an interesting point in the timeline of persuasion. Long ago, it seems, professionals were considered to be the highest paragon of influence. CEOs could move industries, politicians' words were taken as hard currency, and the words of journalists were viewed as impartial observations, not biased opinion.

Publicis' acquisition of Kekst and Co. took the PR industry by surprise, if I'm to extrapolate the recent conversations I've had with senior PR leaders. It shouldn't have.

"I am aware of all Internet traditions." Most of you will read that statement as a mere procession of words. To a small number of you, it's the latest sensation in Internet phraseology; the blogger's equivalent of, "Where's The Beef?"

Public relations pros will often say that the key to making a message resonate with a target audience is reinforcement and repetition. And even when the PR industry is the designated audience, it appears that some messages are worth repeating.

On Sunday, June 8, The New York Times asked 12 political heavyweights to explain what went wrong with the Hillary Clinton campaign. The aggregate response was: "everything."

When talking about how bad they are at promoting themselves, PR pros often claim the irritating cobblers' children defense.

Now that corporations are embracing content creation and social media, PR pros are sometimes surprised to find their job descriptions look quite similar to that of journalists (albeit with obvious caveats regarding objectivity and impartiality).

A man could go crazy with metaphors when trying to describe the historical relationship between Microsoft and Apple.