Town of Chapel Hill communicator provides writing and reporting insights

by Barbara Wiedemann

UNC Hussman lecturer David Francis’ students heard from Ran Northam, a public information officer with the Town of Chapel Hill, bright and early on Tuesday, January 28, in their 8 a.m. “Writing and Reporting” class in Carroll Hall.

Northam, an Appalachian State graduate with previous experience as a studio producer and news and sports director at Chapel Hill radio station WCHL, has been working with the Chapel Hill police department and fire rescue teams since 2014 and currently acts as community safety communications specialist, the first non-sworn P.I.O. working in conjunction with the town’s police and fire departments.

“Writing and Reporting” (MEJO 153) is a core course at Hussman that teaches journalistic skills essential to writing across platforms by giving students hands-on experience in thinking critically about news values and audiences, using news-gathering tools, and writing and editing stories.

Students prepared for Tuesday’s class by following a recent incident report involving the town police and how it was communicated on social media over time.

Northam ran a mock press conference and gave students a chance to get comfortable asking questions of a police representative and gain familiarity with the P.I.O. role, and with how the police and fire department communicators can provide information to reporters.

Nineteen students peppered Northam with questions and provided him with new perspectives. Then they were given off-the-record time to ask Northam any follow-up questions and get a better understanding of how information is handled on social media platforms from his point of view.

Northam gave students tips about how to find publicly available information online, and Francis spoke from his experience as a correspondent for the likes of the Christian Science Monitor, U.S. News and World Report and as senior correspondent at Foreign Policy magazine to point out how useful police sources and public data can be in chasing down a story, particularly on a local news beat.

“We used the incident to learn about the importance of editing, sourcing, vetting sources and verifying all details of a salacious story told on social media,” Francis said. “We also used it to help students understand how to read PR statements to determine what they're actually trying to say, and how public relations officers have to serve many masters.”

First year student Kayleigh Carpenter was intrigued to learn that a P.I.O. would answer some types of questions and not others. "At the end, he described the way he framed some answers to give us only a specific amount of information,“ she said. “This stuck with me because being a reporter requires someone to be investigative and ask the right questions that need to be answered or else the P.I.O. may not just give up that information.”

The class closed with a real-world moment: rather than carrying out the news writing assignment students were expecting, they were instead asked to write as if they were sending a memo to their editor to explain why they didn’t have the story they’d anticipated gathering.