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Journalists Share Best Practices and Insights

It was a sold-out crowd for PRSA’s February 6 lunch meeting featuring a panel of journalists who shared their thoughts and insights on access, better communications, and the relationships between journalists and PR folks. 

The panel included San Antonio Express-News reporter Francisco Vara-Orta; Texas Public Radio reporter Eileen Pace; Express-News Community Newspapers reporter Edmond Ortiz; and Univision’s Miguel Gaytan, executive producer and Gonzalo Magaña, news producer/assignments editor. All of the panelists are Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) members.

The journalists talked about the challenges of smaller staffs; getting the right stories to the right people; providing story angles rather than general ideas; and planning in advance so as to avoid those 4:30 p.m. on Friday panic calls to reports to cover an event that evening.  Everything is not identical in working with the media, however: TV likes images and radio prefers sounds. 

The Univision representatives talked about the importance of visual content: “Images really count”, said Magaña.

Pace noted that TPR seeks sound-rich stories. 

“The noise in the environment is very important to us,” she said. 

PRSA Board member Joel Williams was the moderator of the panel.