VCU’s Pam DiSalvo Lepley Gives the News on News

By Anne Harmer

Few people know and understand the Richmond community better than Pam DiSalvo Lepley.

As Executive Director of University Relations at Virginia Commonwealth University and its Medical Center (MCV), Ms. Lepley connects the public with breaking news events and information on a daily basis. However, don’t be fooled by this simplified job description. When relating news that potentially impacts thousands of people, it’s not as much what you say as how you say it, and the ‘how’ demands both strategy and sensitivity.

Ms. Lepley is hardly a newcomer to news and public relations, having spent 11 years in broadcast journalism before working in the Pennsylvania governor’s office in the environmental agency, where she gained her first experience with public relations. Here in Virginia, Ms. Lepley served as vice president at Siddall Inc., a local public relations and advertising firm. It was at this company that Ms. Lepley gained exposure to health care and higher education issues, inspiring her current position at VCU and MCV.

Despite her considerable expertise, however, no amount of experience could render her present job “easy.” Every news item, big or small, carries with it a unique audience and a different scope of impact, which in turn requires strategic channels of contact.

The first thing to keep in mind? “Always have a goal for communications,” Ms. Lepley advises. “There should always be a reason for communicating.” By specifically answering the question of why a story is important, which helps to organize and prioritize its delivery, the story’s relevant audience also begins to crystallize. This second step, identifying the audience, is indispensable because it determines the actual modes of communication with the public. In addition, after the story’s initial delivery, Ms. Lepley and her team are concerned with staying connected with and responsive to its audience via these channels.

To demonstrate the complexity of determining a story’s audience, Ms. Lepley cites last year’s H1N1 flu virus outbreak. On one level, VCU was involved as a university with a vulnerable student body and concerned families and local residents. In addition to this local audience, national interest fixed on MCV as a potential vaccine source. Thus, some stories create a “concentric circle” effect, where several audiences require news updates about different aspects of one event.

The rise of the Internet is a game-changer in terms of communication media. Online news sites, e-mail and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter join newspapers, radio and television as major news suppliers. For some audiences, especially young people, these modern agents have completely usurped the latter ones as primary news sources.