Growing up in journalism
My dad (AKA Grandy), Randy Rorrer, was a sportswriter for the Daytona Beach News Journal for almost 25 years. He followed in the footsteps of his dad and my grandfather George Rorrer (AKA Pop-Pop) who was also a sportswriter at the Herald-Dispatch and Courier-Journal. My dad’s best-known column was called “Rorrer’s Roar,” and though baseball was his sport–Daytona Beach has a minor league baseball team, the Cubs–he also enjoyed ribbing the resident NASCAR writer and NASCAR fans whenever possible. He also covered the formation of the Jacksonville Jaguars as a team.
When I was younger, I loved to tag along to the office. I would bring my schoolwork or book to keep myself busy while being surrounded by reporters stressed about their deadlines. I knew who worked on the local news because I had watched them make it. Sometimes, I would get to buzz around the sports box at a Daytona Beach Cubs game practicing my lines for the latest show I was in. Although despite my father’s best efforts, I have never, ever taken to sports, which his entire life and career revolved around. I was much more interested in picking the right hot pink lace jazz dance recital costume.
Then and Now
At that point in time, the news still landed on the driveway every morning. On paper, rolled up, in a little plastic bag, for those of you who have never seen that before. At the risk of sounding geriatric, there’s a lot I miss about old school newspapers. My classmates and I toured the News Journal building and learned about what all had to fall into place for the paper that came out EVERY SINGLE DAY to work. We walked through the room with the giant printing press, that would literally churn out the papers to be folded. We saw the delivery trucks, archive rooms, and distinct personalities within each department’s office. The arts and culture department did not have the same work culture as the sports room, with games and recaps playing on televisions scattered throughout the office.
When I was hanging around the newsroom, the word “podcast” didn’t exist yet–it was coined in 2004. Last year, 584 million people around the world listened to one, and Americans now spend more time each day with podcasts than with social media. One in five American adults regularly get their news from TikTok. Now, as I engage with journalism in this new chapter, I watch how our accounts at RebuttalPR continue to explore social media, podcasts, and Substacks as ways to build on our other earned media wins in more traditional outlets.
Sports and litigation journalism: A love story
At first glance, sportswriting has little in common with media work for the plaintiffs’ bar. Yet both are bound by deadlines that don’t budge. In sports journalism, nearly everything runs on rapid response. If my dad and his colleagues felt confident about how a game would end, they might start drafting in the final minutes. But as anyone who’s watched a late comeback game knows, teams can surprise you. The window was tight: write the story, give readers a take on how things went, and get it to the editors. Once the paper went to print, there was no going back. The only fix was a correction in the next day’s edition.
Now, I work for a PR firm that serves the plaintiffs’ bar. Whether it’s an underdog’s surprise win or a big verdict for a lesser-known firm, reporters want to cover it before the moment passes, and someone else tells the story. Our team makes sure our attorneys and firms are part of that story while it’s still being written. Though we have more flexibility with changes, additions, and retractions (a rarity but still exist) due to the digital of it all, the intensity of a week around a firm’s filing feels very familiar to what I saw in the newsroom growing up.
At the end of the day, it’s all about the storytelling
When I try and explain what RebuttalPR does to someone that has no experience (or interest) in the legal space, I go for what my father taught me: always lead with the heart. I tell folks that we do our best to tell the stories of harm that individuals have encountered and play a small role in holding bad actors accountable. I explain that if there’s a major lawsuit they’ve heard about in the last 5 years, there’s a chance my team has been working hard behind the scenes to make that possible.
My father has influenced so many things about who I am, as a RebuttalPR employee and a human being. A big part of my job is to meet, think, and care about people. There is no human my dad doesn’t want to get to know and understand better, and no one he cannot talk to. Outside of the accidental education and appreciation of media, news, and storytelling throughout my childhood, my father taught me to care.
I could write ten more pages on all the ways my father has shaped who I am, but when I connect the dots between myself and journalism, I can’t help but have one of those “woo woo” feelings that I am exactly where I am supposed to be right now. I have always loved stories, and the way stories can help us feel connected to the experiences of people we may never meet, real or fictional.
I can’t force us back in time to hand-deliver the paper, but I feel proud knowing our work could help one person avoid falling into a treacherous situation that we try and warn the general public about every day. Grateful to all ways in which Rorrer’s Roar made me the right person for this gig.
