During a recent office happy hour, we met with Coral Garnick, retail and healthcare reporter at Puget Sound Business Journal. Coral loves finding out what makes people who they are, which drew her to journalism and storytelling. Her career began at The Seattle Times where her extensive writing experience landed her at PSBJ in 2016. We discussed the best and most challenging aspects of her job, the evolution of digital journalism and Coral’s favorite stories of the past year.

Here are a few key takeaways from our conversation with Coral.

· As an online daily publication with a weekly print edition, on average, Coral writes three web stories a day. The news cycle moves fast, so she values efficiency, particularly when it comes to getting access to newsmakers.

· Exclusives matter. Receiving a press release that every other publication in Seattle is receiving isn’t as exciting when making editorial decisions.

· Readers want to hear from company leaders. For Coral, speaking with a CEO for five minutes is preferable to half an hour with a director of communications.

We are ending our “Conversations with those on the front lines” series with one of Seattle’s original bloggers, Jess Estrada of Fresh Jess. Check back to find out how she’s been thriving as a blogger for the past nine years!

* This is the fourth blog post in our series on people who are on the front lines of the changing media landscape. If you missed the first three posts in the series, get caught up on insights from The Evergrey, Seattle Gents co-founders and Obsessed by Portia.