How Saga Covered Charlottesville

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Jim Principi is the President/General Manager for Saga’s Charlottesville Radio Group. We reached out to Jim and asked him how the community is holding up and how his team covered recent events. He told Radio Ink the residents in the community are shaken but resilient. “The community is determined to show that this past weekend’s terrible events do not represent what the Charlottesville community believes or who we are.” Here’s how his team covered the news.

Radio Ink: How did your stations cover the protest when you heard it was happening?
Jim Principi: The community was aware that this was going to happen for over a month as it was announced even before the KKK came to town. For weeks the message from the city was for townspeople to stay away from the downtown area and stay away from the demonstrations. We reported for days and weeks leading up to the event everything that was going to happen so the community would be totally prepared for both the demonstrations and the potential of violence. And the fact that there would be many, many people coming in from outside the area with an express purpose to cause havoc. Unfortunately, that is what happened.

Radio Ink: Did coverage change when it appeared to get out of control?
Jim Principi: We’re very fortunate to have a fully staffed local news department. Our News-Talk station WINA 1070am/98.9FM news team is very experienced. Our coverage did not change because we expected the unexpected and were prepared with news people both on the street and in the newsroom. Of course, no one expected the terrible tragedies that took the lives of three innocent people. We were on the scene of the car running into the crowd.

Radio Ink: How did your team do?
Jim Principi:  Again, Saga believes in being live and local and invests in being live and local, a tribute to our chairman, Ed Christian. So we had a dedicated staff who manned our newsroom and was on the street from Friday night at the University of Virginia grounds, all through the night Friday and Saturday and Sunday. They did a great job. We are all very proud of their commitment and dedication.

Radio Ink: What, if any, followup coverage do you have planned?
Jim Principi: On Monday, on our Morning News program host, Rick Daniels, had on a tremendous range of local guests. Our midday personality, Rob Schilling, opened up the phones for his entire show, giving listeners a chance to verbalize what they were feeling. Because we have so much local programming, we will continue reacting with the community and helping in whatever way we can this community to heal.

Radio Ink: Talk about the role you believe radio plays when something like this happens.
Jim Principi: Radio is immediate. It’s instantaneous. As events happened and twists and turns developed, we were there on the air and on site, keeping the community informed. It’s such a valuable, necessary tool to keep the public informed and on top of all that this crazy world continues to offer up every day. I also have to say, traffic on the WINA website was going through the roof all weekend. We, again, were very fortunate to have the necessary resources to provide our community with the information they so wanted to receive.

Reach out to Jim to congratulate him and his team on a job well done in Charlottesville at  [email protected]

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