ESPN Journalist Katie Barnes speaks about the importance of telling impactful stories

UNIVERSITY PARK, PA. - On March 14, award-winning ESPN journalist Katie Barnes, who often tackles the intersection of sports and gender, taught a room full of journalists some helpful tips on the importance of telling impactful stories.

Barnes handed out copies of their book, Fair Play, where they speak about the evolution of women’s sports as a political arena, prompting much praise from other journalists. Their work has also appeared in Sportscenter, Outside the Lines, and the ESPN Daily podcast.

“For me, I think every story has the opportunity to be impactful…anything that moves your audience, makes an impact. It doesn’t matter if you’re writing off an incredible basketball game, or if you’re telling a story about an athlete recovering from multiple gunshot wounds,” said Barnes. “That impact may not be equal [in terms of] the type of emotion it elicits, but both of those stories have the ability to be impactful.”

Barnes had provided a helpful acronym to help aspiring journalists when writing their own stories, known as PIECES (Purpose, Intention, Experience, Clarity, Emotion and Specificity.) They compared them to popular media such as in music and some of their own published stories, one of which being an emotional piece about the knee injury of UConn’s Azzi Fudd.

“I feel like the advice they had about molding your story together, especially for me as a writer, was interesting. I now have a good list of tips in the back of my mind when I’m composing my own stories,” said Hannah Valcourt, a third-year journalism student who was in attendance.

As the attendees left the event, they left with a deeper understanding of the importance and process of telling impactful and meaningful stories, in hopes that they may use the skills they had learned in their journalism futures.

Gavin Rollman is a junior majoring in broadcast journalism. To contact him, email him at gmr5526@psu.edu.