Alumna’s journey from athlete to reporter
By Justin Lafreniere
A month into her freshman year, Dianna Russini, BA Communication ’05, sat in George Mason University’s Johnson Center Bistro and watched the giant projector show the horrors of September 11, watching NBC4’s anchors Jim Vance and Doreen Gentzler, hanging on their every word as they reported on the tragedy of that day.
The events confirmed what Russini had always thought: she needed to be on the news.
“I never forgot the importance of them (Vance and Gentzler) in that moment,” she said.
Russini, a walk-on soccer player who became a scholarship athlete and starter, began interning with the Washington Wizards and as a sideline reporter on the Colonial Athletic Association for Comcast SportsNet. She also got a little help practicing her news skills from her teammates.
“They’d let me interview them on the bus to games,” Russini said. “And they would write letters to stations, telling them that they should put me on the air.”
After graduation, Russini hopped around the country, a necessary part of being a television reporter. She covered crime in New York City before moving back to covering sports, her true passion, in Seattle. A year later, she was back on the East Coast where news and sports mixed as she covered the Sandy Hook shooting, the Boston Marathon bombing, and her most memorable on-air report: a Boston Bruins hockey game, the first sporting event held in the city after the bombing.
“It was the moment the city began to heal,” Russini said about the game and its famous tearful, emotional crowd-sung national anthem.
Being a female sports reporter in the machismo-dominated world of professional sports is rarely easy.
“You make a decision when you walk into a clubhouse about what type of reporter you want to be," she said. "There are dozens of successful avenues, but you have to work overtime to match everyone else, especially in the NFL. You have to know the material and try to lead the coverage.”
For herself, Russini has decided to be tenacious, yet affable, bonding with athletes over a shared understanding of what it takes to compete.
“I was taught how to be a TV reporter by some of the best in New York City,” Russini said. “I’m a reporter that wants to tell the best story, get the information right, in the quickest way possible.”
She considers scooping the news that free agent DeSean Jackson would sign with the Washington Redskins as her biggest break.
“No one paid attention before I started asking questions," said Russini. "Then, all of a sudden, I wasn’t a TV bunny anymore.”
Russini also focuses on giving back to the community. She recently returned to campus for the Washington Journalism and Media Conference. Russini participated as a panelist in “Careers in Journalism” and focused on discussing the difficulties and joys of working in the fast-paced, nonstop wide, wide world of sports.
“You can be successful,” Russini says. “But everyone is always watching.”