Roanoke resident Jen McCaffrey is a full-time health and family reporter for The Roanoke Times. A native of New York, McCaffrey boasts a background in educational publishing, freelance writing and federal court case coverage. She is enjoying the relaxed pace of life in rural Virginia.

Q: Have health and family issues always been an interest area for you?
A: "They became more of an interest area because about two and a half years ago, the paper reassessed some of its content. We looked at some readership surveys and then just different demographic trends in the area. We also looked at what other papers our size were doing. We came up with a bunch of recommendations and ways to change our content to make it more relevant to people. Coverage of health was something that emerged from those recommendations. We had had a children and families reporter, and we do have a business and health reporter. Sometimes our reporter in business would find some sort of public health issue like flu shots, and he would pitch in a cover. But there were really so many issues, that they decided that we could create another position. We also identified a few areas that we didn’t think we were covering very well. We have a significant elderly population and there’s a lot of need for coverage on prescription drugs and medicine. So this switch was sort of an attempt to have more news that would actually be useful and relevant."

Q: What is a typical story that you would cover?
A: "It’s very different as opposed to when I was covering federal court. There’s a bigger range here, and sometimes we have breaking news. An example of that happened a while back. We found out that there were some children at a daycare center in Roanoke who might have been exposed to tuberculosis. Because that sort of thing is breaking news, you have to get it right. You’re trying to get it on the website, or in the papers the next day. Breaking news is always the first priority. For the most part, there’s a lot less breaking news though. Then there’s stuff that’s more what we would call enterprise work. That’s where you might notice or hear about something, and then just follow up on it. It’s not something that necessarily comes in a press release from the health department. Or you might even get a press release that just sort of jogs something. Then you might follow up, and see if it leads to a bigger story."

Q: So then you can just sort of follow your own stories?
A: "We did a story on people who didn’t have health insurance a while back, and then it sort of turned into covering non-insured week nationally. But that’s a tough thing, because you don’t want to tie yourself into doing a story on every kind of week. There’s breast cancer awareness month and colon cancer awareness month and some of it’s interesting; however, you don’t want to peg your stories just because there’s an awareness week. You need to take a step back and make sure that it’s really something that is relevant to people in this area."

Q: Also just based on the issue of health, I read an article online the other day, published in June of last year called “Why is our Government Pursuing a War on Doctors?” One part of the article addressed your coverage of the trial of Dr. Knox. You quoted someone as saying that the joke between doctors in Roanoke is, “Write a prescription, go to jail.” I’m sure that you were pretty passionate about the issue because peoples’ health is not a laughing matter. After reading the article, I started thinking about your job and all that it entails. So my question is do you ever experience difficulties remaining objective when you’re writing stories that deal with peoples’ health and well-being?
A: "Objectivity can certainly be a challenge. As a reporter that’s part of the reason I’m here. It’s part of the reason we don’t have a different reporter cover the same story unless people had changed jobs or something. You want someone who knows what happened in the months coming up to the case. There have been cases that have been pretty controversial, and sometimes people aren’t happy. It’s interesting with criminal cases because often, someone gets indicted. Generally the indictments are pretty detailed, and so there’s a lot of information about what a particular person allegedly did. If someone gets indicted in a big case, we’re going to write about it. Generally these types of stories are pretty imbalanced, so I just try to look for opportunities. If the defense is talking, I try to get that in there. Before someone is convicted of anything, there are a whole lot of stories in the paper saying they’ve been charged with this and that. There’s nothing wrong with reporting those things, but a lot of times it’s pretty imbalanced. I think you could look either way and say that from either side, there are stories that don’t look fair. You have to go with the information that you have."


Q: On the topic of information, I know as a student reporter that sometimes it can be difficult to get people to give you information. Are their any tactics or guidelines that you follow to get the sort of information you’re looking for?
A: "Often I might contact a spokesperson of a company, and sort of explain what I’m trying to do and just see if they can put me in touch with someone who might know of someone in that particular situation. When we were doing the story on the people who didn’t have health insurance, I got a lot of my sources by asking around at work. I asked if they knew of anyone without health insurance who would be willing to talk with me. You can’t just open the phone book and start calling people. There’s no way. In general I would say though, people are pretty helpful."


Q: Is there anything about your current job that you weren’t expecting?
A: "I think moving from federal court to The Roanoke Times has been a big change. The way court reporters find stories is by talking to people and checking files. I think it’s more wide open here. We get random press releases from people up in New York who we’d never write about. People just waste money sending them in. It’s kind of amazing but there are a lot more pitches. People say, “Hey write about this product.” So there’s a lot more going through stuff and trying to gage whether it’s anything that we would ever write about. As a federal court reporter I never had people trying to get me to write about their products."

Q: Now that you’ve been in the field, what are some things that you think define a good reporter?
A: "I think the people who are the good reporters are the ones who have established enough of a track record with people on their beats. They’re getting to the point where they’re able to do some really good enterprise work because people might have seen something that they’ve done. Sources will consider telling a reporter something that they’ve heard, if they respect his/her work. Good reporters also need the skills to be able to avoid doing a quick story that just skims the surface. There’s a lot more to most stories. It’s the complex ones that are really hard to do. The good reporters are really able to get out there and dig deeper."