Welcome to Knight Talks, the Uni of Florida College of Journalism and Communications talk show, produced by students for students.

Im Valentina Sandoval, a sophomore studying journalism.

And our guest today is Sara Gani who is an award-winning crime reporter for several organizatio and as a correspondent for CNN.

And now she's a freelance journa as well as a journalist in-resid for UF College of Journalism Communications Brechner Center for Freedom of Information.

Hi, Sara.

Thank you so much for being here Thank you for having me.

So you're a graduate of Penn Sta University's communication progr Did you always see yourself as a You know, from the earliest days I can remember, I loved to write and my parents would tell you that I love to ask questions from the moment that I could tal It took me a while to put those two things But somewhere around age 15, my clipped a newspaper clipping.

So I grew up in South Florida.

The Sun-Sentinel was our hometow newspaper, and back then there was still a section of the that was produced completely by teenage reporters, high school reporters for high s And she clipped that section out and she put it on my desk in my and she was like, I think you should do this.

And I went and I wrote my first and I just absolutely fell in lo not just with the process of writing and reporting, but the atmosphere of being in a And from that moment, I knew tha to be a reporter and nothing els And I pretty much tailored my college experience in order to sort of try to match that atmosphere, that feeling of being in a newsr I picked Penn State because I vi and I visited the college newspa And it, you know, you walked into their and you got that same feeling.

The paper's piled so high that it was a fire hazard.

And people sitting around chatti stories and pizza boxes that were two weeks old in the c And I knew that that's where I wanted to be and where I wante how to be a journalist.

That's an amazing starting story So after college, you worked for the Center Daily followed by the Patriot News, both based in Pennsylvania.

As a crime reporter for these ou what did your role entail and what were some of your biggest c Yeah, so, you know, being a local reporter is so gre because you get to especially at you know, smaller outlets, at the start of your career, I really what was so beneficial was the ability to try new thing And, you know, when you're at a newspaper with five reporters and, you know, maybe two or thre you have the ability to grab a c and run out and, like, try a photo story or, you know, to maybe write somethi in a non-traditional way and see how it works.

I had the benefit of starting in where I had the ability to be creative, to w and report on lots of different kinds of st and to really, you know, and to some degree, you know, make small mistakes in a place where the stakes were not huge.

And really grow and learn in tho You know, you're also covering n that's really impactful and impo to the people who are consuming which is not always true when you kind of graduate to big national news organizatio You don't feel- You don't always that immediate impact that you would feel when you cover a house fire and leads to donations to the people who lost their hom or when you cover, you know, a l and you can see the borough coun or the state legislature pass la that come from that.

That kind of sense of community and that kind of local journalism really, not only did it teach me a lot, but it became really the bedrock and the foundation of my philoso about reporting after I moved on from those plac That's amazing.

I love that you started from the base of it.

Like it's very important to tell stories of local things rather than just big national ev Obviously, those are just as imp but it's always important to lik stay at home first and then grow from that.

So I think that's awesome that you did that.

So you broke the story that Jerr was under investigation for sexual abuse allegations.

Can you share a little bit with how you approach such a difficul not only thematically, but also because it was you're shining a light on your alma mat Yeah, it really goes back to you your first question, which is I approached it as a local story about local peo I didn't, for better or for worse, I did n becoming a big national news sto that would be so impactful or so career changi personally.

Truly, I was a crime reporter and someone told me about a crim and I wanted to go investigate that and see if that was true, if those allegations were true.

You know, it wasn't the first story that I ever covered that was not going to put my alm into... A perfect light.

That was not going to shed a goo on my alma mater.

Right.

Thank you.

In fact, there were plenty of st before that that I had written that did not look favorably upon Penn State.

And I was very used to the sort fan backlash that would come with writing stories I was no longer at that point under the delusion that, like Pe could do nothing wrong.

But there are things that certai you have to think about as a rep when you're covering stories about crime and covering stories about such intimate trauma and it can be different than a lot of other beats in tha talking to people oftentimes about the worst days of their li And for you, it's just another d because it's part of your job.

For them, it is, you know, it is a really A very difficult day.

Yeah.

And so, you know, I certainly learned a lot in bot you know, about how local report can have a big impact nationally but also how those kinds of stor deserve an extra level of care.

After The Patriot-News, you became a correspondent with How was the change in that?

How did your roles kind of switc as you said becoming from something smaller to such a big news station?

It was a huge transition for me because not only was I going fro being a local reporter in a smal where I could literally walk or drive a couple of miles to pretty much any source that I had or any event that I was covering or, you know if I wanted to dig a little bit, I could just go on a Saturday and dig a little bit.

But I was also switching mediums So switching from a local print to a national cable news correspondent is, you know, a lot of change in one And so, too much change, to be h So the transition was significan And, you know, I'm glad I had the experience because where it has me today, a decade later, is in a really good position whe I can be comfortable in many different mediums, be comfortable telling stories in small towns and big towns, and on a large scale and in a ve you know, micro scale, too.

And I feel that it's put me in a place where I can really think about every individual story that I want to tell.

What's the best platform for tha What's the best vehicle for deli How can I be the best steward of that story?

Taking a story from the person o people where it originates to th And that's a really special plac to be in, because I don't feel l I really, truly only know how to write a story so if I want to tell it, I have to write it.

I get to decide what medium is best to tell a story in the most impactful way.

And that's what that transition did for me.

I feel like that's also very goo for students right now.

One of the things that everybody try everything until you find exactly what you You definitely did that.

With CNN, actually in 2018, you produced a documentary called Dirty Water: Danger From Tell us a little about how that project came together and the work that it took behind the scenes.

Yeah, that project actually started ye because I was a breaking news we reporter for a while when I was And the Flint water crisis really erupted on a weekend inti You know, it was an ongoing issue for the people there, for the local reporters who were covering it.

But national news didn't quite pick up on it until sort of random weekend in 2014.

It might not have been 2014, to Actually, there's one random wee and I got deployed to Flint in sort of the way that CNN and other news organizations oft where they just pluck somebody who's available and say you know, find a story or tell t I got into Flint on a weekend and I ended up spending a significant amount of time reporting on the ground there and really became- Contaminated water became a beat of mine for And that's what led to the docum years later.

Coming out of Flint, like, what did water contamination loo What did it feel like?

How was it being dealt with in rural Americ And that's where danger from the tap came from.

So after that, you became the journalist in-res for the CJCs Brechner Center.

What is this center, its mission the importance of freedom of inf My role at the Brechner Center i a podcast called Why Don't We Kn which looks at government secrec and data deserts.

Data deserts are basically thing that you, you being the average might think the government would be tracking and keeping tabs on, disseminating i about to the public.

But they're not.

And so the podcast really is abo topics that you may have heard o concussions in athletics or the criminal justice system, about body camera footage, about accessibility to records, about bullying or about gun violence in schools, taking these big themes, these b headlines that everyone has heard of before, and digging deeper into the data that exists or does not exist and the secrecy that persists and how that secrecy and that lack of information mak so that these are problems that are harder to solve.

And really part of this idea cam my years at CNN, where it was not uncommon for me to be constantly covering the same kind of stories, the same kind of bad things, same kind of trauma, to be interviewing people year a about basically the same set of you know.

And year after year, you would h families and victims and advocat say, never again, you know, we're going to fix thi And then the next year or the ne you'd be covering the same story And it sort of began as an introspective look at why, you know, why is th Why are we always covering the same stories?

Why can't we fix some of these big top line problems?

And is secrecy and the lack of data contributin It's very interesting, especially since I feel like a l lack of information affects comm locally, too, a lot.

So that kind of goes back to you about how important it is to tel local news, because that lack of information, that lack of knowin what's going on in this big system is precisely what makes other places like Fli be in the situations that they'r Regarding this precisely, simila In 2020, you created another documentary titled No De Did it take a huge amount of inv work to uncover the story of the US military being one of the largest polluters in the Yeah, and this particular story actually wasn't what I would consider to be inve It was more about aggregating a lot of little stories that were popping up around the about this topic of military pollution here domestic And pulling them together to see a big picture, which was that the military was the number one of this one particular group of called Forever Chemicals, which are basically everywhere and very, very difficult to get and contaminate a lot of people' water, especially around militar So communities that housed milit and the people who live on them or near them.

And, you know, the the story is really about the pe It's about the veterans and thei and the communities around these that haven't been able to get he for many years because the government has been refusing to clean up th And then bigger than that, because the government is both the polluter and the reg it leads to a lot of other pollu by private companies because the government's reluctant to regulate private companies for doing some that they're also doing.

And so it really, truly affects And so that documentary wasn't about digging.

It was actually right there.

It was just about showing people the big picture and kind of connecting a lot of It was about adding it all toget Yeah, it was about adding it all That's very interesting.

So going back to the Why Don't We Know podcast, what role did the Freedom of Information A play in trying to find this info in data deserts?

Yeah, when we started the Why Do Know project, the idea was like, after all the data that doesn't and then we'll put it out there.

Well, that is actually a really difficult thing to do.

But not only that, the part of t that it doesn't exist in a database somewhere already it's very difficult when the gov doesn't mandate data to be colle to go after it at the micro micr and try to aggregate that in a w that is contextually authentic.

You know, that's not comparing apples to o And so what we did instead, we used public records request to see where the data gaps are.

So essentially, if we get a request back and it shows really great data that often does not become a sto what we're looking for are the denials or the requests that come back with the We don't keep that information.

When people say to me or when I get a request back that says that data doesn't exis that is a huge red flag for me because I'm like, Why not.

How, for example, Episode one of Season one How could schools not be keeping track of concussions of athletes That makes no sense, right?

So that's the story.

It became more about where the secrecy is, where the privac and students play a huge role in because public records requests are they can be really burdensome.

They take a lot of time.

Students do a lot of really good helping us organize those requests to get them out t and to get them back.

Students are also playing a huge in reporting for the podcast.

You know, they come on air and they discuss with me what they found behind the scene They're also doing things like f checking and, you know, background research for future episodes.

We have students who our entire staff is students.

So students are editing the podc working on sound design and equalizing the podcast, maki sound professional at the end of So it could not be done without UF students at the CJC and they truly are the backbone of the podcast.

That's amazing.

It's awesome that you're giving opportunity to have so much expe in the field and also investigat because that's like 90% of reporting is that, so it's definitely a good experi You do have another podcast that you produced called The Mayor of Maple Avenue.

So what led to continuing the st Shawn Sinisi, a victim of Jerry This was a story I never thought that I was going It wasn't one that I was looking In fact, I pretty much closed th on covering the Sandusky story.

And then one day I got a call from a mother of one of his vict a victim who I had not heard of He was not part of the criminal And she basically just started t in this phone call about the troubles that her son since Sandusky's arrest.

And for me, it was a moment agai a moment of introspection where I realized, like all of the rest of us, and I am speaking on behalf of society here for a moment, we all kind of like threw our ar up in victory when Sandusky was or when any bad guy in these sit is convicted or loses their job.

You know, in a post-MeToo world, there is the sense that, like, if this person is called out and there's a consequence, then Like we've won.

The story is over.

And certainly for the media, it is over, they move on.

And so this was a story about how it's not over for the victims of those crimes, of those bad ac And, you know, Shawn's story is particularly de because he spent about a decade really wrestling with what happened to him, dealing with, you know, drug addiction.

And just all of the societal safety nets failed this man.

You know, he became addicted to And when he got the label of add people started to look at him di and treat him differently.

And then as often happens, the addiction led to criminal ac And then he was, you know, labeled a criminal.

And then, you know, then he was certainly perceived diffe So, you know, he goes from being to an addict to a criminal.

And suddenly, you know, the societal structures aren't w You know, people don't seem to t the way that they would treat hi if they saw him as an eight year who had been abused by someone.

He was just like this criminal, And so the Mayor of Maple Avenue is Shawns story of life and eventually of death by overdose in a McDona bathroom.

Oh, my God.

I feel like that is definitely a very important perspective to It's very easy to get caught up on the news and on the big picture of everyt that you don't think about the w those news affect people individ So it is exceptionally great tha a story about him specifically.

I really love that.

So turning back to your involvem with universities, apart from your involvement with you also began working as the Ja Madison Visiting Professor on First Amendment issues at Columbia University in New Yo What are some of the big ideas that we should all care about in regard to the First Amendment I think, you know, the First Ame is so vital to the conversation right about the health of democracy, the ability for journalists to do their work uninterrupted, unhindered.

It's such an important pillar of our democracy.

I think back to my early, early as a reporter at the tiny little Center Daily when I was probably 19 or 20 yea And I was in the court clerk's o one day, and the Precedent Judge and he was like, Oh, the CDT is you know, the the fourth estate.

And I was like, what the heck is And so I probably could tell by my naive face that I was like and he goes, you know, there's the executive branch and there's the judicial branch and there's Congress.

And then unofficially there's th And that always stuck with me.

You know, that moment where I kind of realized, oh, my gosh, like, this is a really important job.

And I want to make sure that the next generation of jour is neither discouraged by the economic state of the ind or by the cultural and political attacks on the ind So that's and that's always been important but I think it's more important right now.

That is also very important to m personally.

I have faced many people saying you know, the media's just like full of bias and full of everything.

And yes, obviously there is bias in the m but we have a job to tell the tr and that's something that nobody is going to do the way we do it.

So there is very much a need for more reporting.

There's very much a need for us to tell stories.

It's certainly not a perfect ind and everybody in it isn't doing a perfect job.

But I mean, first of all, find m an industry where there is no fl what I don't want is that to discourage the next generation of journalis or to attract the wrong kind of journalists in our next gener And so, I think it's very import So speaking of the media, too, you've worked in media across print, cable and podcasting.

Do you see journalism heading in a new, interesting di like with social media and everything else coming up?

Yeah, that's an interesting ques I think that social media and th it plays in journalism has been of the conversation for many yea now, and people are still trying to figure it out, I think.

You know, and I think there's a lot of cool stuff out there an that people are consuming their and a lot of different and cool You know, TikTok.

Who would have ever thought that TikTok would be a place where people got so much of thei But it is effective.

It's very e I don't so much focus on platfor anymore.

What I focus on is what's the ri for the right platform.

So there are really effective wa of using social to tell stories, but not every story belongs ther But the vise versa is true as we And so my focus right now, my own professional life, but also when I talk to people i like this, is really trying to emphasize th that you think about the right p for the story.

That's very interesting.

So in this switch that you've do through media and everything, what advice would you share with aspiring journalists?

My biggest piece of advice, I think, is to think of yourself as a journalist first, not as a journalist, not as a broadcast j not as, you know, someone who wants to be a podcas someone who wants to write magazine stories.

Think of yourself as a journalis and then, really educate yourself in as ma platforms and gather information about as many techniques as poss It's not just because it could h tell stories better, but it actually can help you mor get a job.

It really gives you flexible on, you know, in shaky economic to go after jobs that you care a where you're covering the kinds that you want and not have to worry like, oh, I can't, you kno I can't cover environmental just for NPR because I've never done radio be Or, I really can't, you know, I can't cover, you know, race and economics for you know, a magazine because I've never written a 10, story.

Like, having flexibility in your skill set an a diverse skill set is really, really impo It will help, I think, a lot of journalists be more suc All right.

Thank you so much.

You provided a lot of important both for future journalist and just for the people in gener As he said, it's very important the public informed and to alway both in local and national news.

I enjoyed this talk a lot and I hope you get to.

I did.

Thank you again for your insight And thank you, our viewers, for joining us.

Until next time and goodnight.