Public Relations & The Media: Understanding the Reporter's Mindset

Chicago PR Firm

National Media Coverage with All Points PR

I tuned in to CNN the other night to find myself once again captivated by the storm Penn State University officials have created for themselves.

What caught my attention this time though was the reporter in the field relaying her perspective back to the anchor in the studio. The journalist in the segment was on Penn State's campus. It was Sara Ganim, the local newspaper crime beat reporter who broke the story.

She's now become a contributing reporter for CNN. A small market newspaper reporter in central Pennsylvania is on CNN in just her mid-20s, leading the coverage of one of the year's biggest stories. It honestly elicits a rage of goose bumps.


As a former media reporter myself, and one who loved nothing more than breaking big stories, I am tickled by what Ganim has accomplished. She's talked about what it took to break the story. Good, hard core local reporting…knocking on doors, getting escorted off of private property, scouring through piles of police reports and keeping her nose close to the story's trail…all the things die-hard reporters love to do, but rarely have the opportunity to take on given the focus on news of the day stories.

These are the types of stories newshounds crave, and the best and brightest of them get done right. Sara Ganim dug deep, developed credible sources, connected the dots that led to extremely prominent figures, and by all measures was very responsible in her work.

I point this out because I am genuinely impressed with her work. I communicate with reporters everyday and it takes a special journalist to make me pause and appreciate their hard work and commitment to journalism.

Newsbreakers like Ganim are just the kind of contacts we like to make at All Points Public Relations. Our media relations programs focus on building trusting relationships with high quality reporters, which we cultivate by bringing them storylines we develop for our clients.