TSP: Bob Grawey, News Reporter, The Star News

By Jason Falls

Covering community news in the booming suburbs of a major metropolitan area like Minneapolis-St. Paul, Minn., offers on of the more hectic and challenging beats in the media business. Bob Grawey of The Star News not only has that assignment for the northwest metropolitan Twin Cities area, but has taken on the challenge as a second career. Grawey moved into journalism after years working in the manufacturing and warehouse industry.

As the community news beat can include its fair share of city council meetings and the minutiae of covering governments and bureaucracies, Grawey typically looks for the human element in stories.

Graweys work can be found on The Star News website at www.erstarnews.com.

THE STRAIGHT PITCH

Name:
Bob Grawey

Position & Organization:
News reporter

Organizational Background/Audience Profile:
The Star News is a weekly newspaper serving five rapidly growing communities in the northwest metropolitan Twin Cities area. We are part of ECM Publishing with media outlets throughout central and southern Minnesota. Weekend coverage extends to more communities.

Briefly describe your role:
My beat includes three communities, so I cover city council meetings and township meetings. It keeps me quite busy as these are among the fastest growing communities in Minnesota. I do a lot of feature writing as well.

My best stories are those where I get the opportunity to connect the readers emotionally with something someone has done in the community, such as when a five-year-old boy saved his mom’s life. Even in the more mundane government reporting, putting a measure of human element into a story helps connect the readers with what makes the story essential to them.

Tell us a little about your background:
I have been a reporter for a little less than a year. I went back to school to get my degree in journalism when I was 45 years old. Before that I worked in manufacturing and warehouses. I guess you can say I’m a LATE bloomer!

How do you prefer to be approached with story ideas?
It doesn’t matter to me how I get my story ideas. The point is spending time listening to people, because many times there are stories right under our noses if we just give people a chance to talk about what matters the most to them.
But I’ll take story ideas in any form.

What key ingredients make a pitch appealing to you?
Human involvement is huge for me. I hate it when I get someone representing a company’s interest and all they are looking for is free advertising. I would much rather talk to the people involved who have a vested interest in the subject matter. It may be there is a bigger story the person doesn’t see because they are too close to it.

What methods of pitching or contents within a pitch turn you off to the idea?
No PR pitches really turn me off. I many times will not respond if I feel the PR person does not understand my newspaper’s coverage area. Sometimes I will get stuff from PR people for things happening in the Twin Cities or in southern Minnesota. These are not even close to what we cover.

Which are more helpful in your decision-making, press releases or fact sheets?
Know our coverage area, and always include more than one piece of contact information. Also include contact info for the person involved in the event or topic, rather than just a PR representative.

Do you prefer broad story ideas or pitches intended for specific segments, features or placement?
More specific ideas are much more preferred.

What else can PR professionals do to help you do your job?
Just do not think of media as free advertisement for a client. That is the worst thing possible. I’m not interested in PR spin. I want to talk to the people involved to find my own angle, or if it merits a story to begin with.

Technorati Tags: Bob Grawey, Star News, Minnesota news, community news, community newspaper, community beat, journalism, journalists, story pitches, story ideas, media relations, public relations, PR

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