(JOURNALISM) using flattery to gain access to sources. The phrase is usually used in the context of White House or Congressional press corps, who use fulsome praise of high-ranking officials whose favor they need. Usually, officials like to be publicly represented as magnificent, selfless, tireless public servants; in exchange for such blurbs, they may invite specific reporters to exclusive events, thereby boosting the reporter's status.
It's actually been a feature of the business press for ages.
Since the financial crisis of 2008, business reporters have tended to write dismissively of bank executives. Six years ago they were likely to have written a beat sweetener about some CEO who was now shithead-of-the week.
Me: Dog why have you not been answering your phone?
Sun: Sorry bro i was beat skeeting!
Me: Beat skeet?
Sun: You don't know what beat skeet is?
Me: When you beat it till you skeet it?
Sun: Exactly!
Dr. Drew on Celebrity Rehab said "All of a sudden what had been just another Hollywood proposal became for him an unexpected blessing, an opportunity for growth. In drug recovery language, that's called a "God shot."
A food native to Pittsburgh/Western Pennsylvania in which cubes of pork and/or veal are put on a short, wooden skewer, breaded, then baked and/or fried.
I've heard that city chicken originated during the Great Depression, when folks didn't have enough money to buy full cuts of meat, so they assembled meat scraps on a wooden skewer, creating a make-shift drumstick. Hence the name.