Interviewing a Reporter

Daniela DePaola
COM380-002
Interview a Reporter

The person I chose to interview is Sarah Fisher. Sarah is a reporter at “The Review,” which is the local paper for Roxborough/Manayunk. I asked Sarah to tell me about a case she had covered, and then to tell me a little bit about how and why she went about covering it the way she did.
This case was in Easton, and involved all juvenile offenders. Sarah was given this case by her editor to cover, but she says she was a little discouraged because she knew it would be hard to get information due to the fact that all parties involved were minors. As it turned out the courts had closed this case because of the fact that the only witness was a juvenile, but Sarah worked it out so that she could sit in the minor’s testimony.
Basically, there were four minors involved. Three of the juveniles were 17 years old. The group of 17 years olds consisted of two boys and one girl. The fourth juvenile was a 14 year old boy, who was also the brother of the 17 year old who got shot. The three 17 year olds were running a heroin ring in Easton. One of the boys had come up short on his payments for the week. The way the other two decided to resolve this was by going to his house. The only ones at the 17 year old boy’s home were him and his brother. When the other two arrived at the home they went up stairs. The one boy shot the other boy, whose house they were in. When the boy was shot he fell down the steps to where his 14 year old brother was.
The brother was the only witness to this shooting. Sarah was only allowed to sit in for the testimony from this boy. Due to this fact she decided to use undisclosed sources when she wrote her story because she did not want to reveal the names of any of the juveniles involved.
Ultimately, the 17 year old boy who was the shooter was found guilty and convicted for 20 years to life, but the girl was going to have a separate trial because she was not the actual shooter. The girl was being used as a second witness and was charged with accessory to murder.
Sarah gave me some tips for covering a case. She says to always carry your press pass if you’re trying to get anywhere near a closed court room, and always use alleged unless the police state something different in their records. By always using police records as proof then you can avoid getting into a lot of trouble.