As a journalism major, one of our last classes is Reporting Public Affairs. To me, this class is the Journalism School's chinese water torture until that swift kick in the butt during graduation, when you realize you have absolutely no job prospects and your degree will really get you no where except right back in the classroom to probably teach or get a masters in something else.
This class entails attending Tucson City Council meetings as well as the Pima County Board of Supervisors meetings which, granted, are extremely important to our well-being as concerned citizens, but it is extremely boring. As I've informed you, I'm more focused on the broadcast side of journalism, but more specifically the sports broadcasting part. All the legal jargon and the dry interviews make for horrible news writing. My professor even labeled one of my stories lame.
The Pima County Board of Supervisors decided to give back the $50,000 they technically stole/took (that's just my editorialization, you can make your own judgement) away from the Southern Arizona Sports Foundation. The money was given to the county/SASF in lieu of the charity game that's annually played between the Chicago White Sox and the Arizona Diamondbacks. The charity game is the Foundation's main source of funding (which then in turn is granted to small non-profit organizations that provide life-lesson activities to Arizona's youth such as the Boys and Girls Club, Girl and Boy Scouts and many others). And since it's a joint effort between Pima County and the Diamondbacks, Pima County had to accept the money back in January. However, instead of it going to the SASF, Pima County at the time decided to put it in the Outside Agency Fund - which also provides for non-profits, just not for the youth.
It's a great story, but based off of the only quotes I had...it sounded SUPER lame. I couldn't have agreed more! My problem is that when I put it down in news format that I think people will read, it doesn't agree with how my professor wants it to read. It's meeting coverage so in the first couple paragraphs I need to have straight up, to the point, what the Board had decided. But I wanted to make it more featuresy since there was drama in the meeting between the president of SASF and some of the supervisors. If I were to write in broadcast format (my particular focus in my major) I could have totally rocked it. Instead, I'm caught between english creative non-fiction writing and showing how it all happened with broadcast writing, which then, in turn, equals LAME.
To continue with this torture, our class covered the press conference on Thursday, Feb. 18 where U.S. Secretary of Transportation Ray Lahood joined Congreswoman Gabrielle Giffords and Congressman Raúl Grijalva and many others to announce that Tucson would be receiving $63 million dollars to fund a modern streetcar project in hopes that it will revamp downtown Tucson and bring in a nice boost to its economy. Not only that, but the project will create thousands of jobs - according to Giffords - in Arizona and nation wide. For example, the streetcars will be constructed in Portland. (I think it's a great idea, but I feel like it'd be better if we'd had the money to spend after the fact, as if the city's transportation department had saved up for it. I'm trying to be optimistic.)
When I finally got a chance to interview Grijalva, I started to notice that he was a little short with his answers and when I started asking the harder questions like "What happens after the jobs are done?" and "What's going to happen to those people after they don't have a job to do when this one's finished?" he got even more snippy with me. I may slightly be exaggerating, but you can ask my husband: Grijalva's tone changed when I played back the interview tape.
I point this out because I wondered if Grijalva had a "short-man complex" since he wasn't nice with me. As a politician I would have thought he'd be a little more congenial. And my husband could not stop laughing about it. You see, I was wearing these four inch high boots and so I looked maybe a couple inches taller than him. If I'd just been standing we'd have been about the same height. So knowing how some men can be when women are taller than them, I wondered about and my husband just rolled around the kitchen floor. Louis informed me that he'd told the guys at work and they were equally entertained.
Louis is big into politics and we're both conservative thinkers. Personally, I hate politics, so hence the sports focus. It's all so depressing. This whole crisis with the state budget is just so overwhelming I can't even make heads or tails of it, so I'm hoping legislators are.
I absolutely love your description of your last class! Though I have to admit I am not sure as to what the picture is. I keep thinking it is something obvious and I am not seeing it. I will feel like a fool when you tell me I am sure! I cannot believe a professor of yours labeled your story lame! I am laughing about it but I cannot believe it. How sad that you have to sit through torture to go into the field you love. Are the stories that come from it as boring as the meetings themselves or are you allowed to spice things up a bit with humor etc?
ReplyDeleteI would think your teacher would allow you to spice things up. It makes sense that as a journalist you want the readers to read the story and not fall asleep on them. As long as the informational is factual, I do not see the problem. I love the visual of you towering over Grijalva. That is too funny! You may be right about the reason though. He has always seemed like such a nice guy that it is a surprise he would be snippy. As for the legislators making sense of things… I am not sure they are any more than anyone else ever does. It seems like someone is always losing BUT I love your optimism!
Great blog Sarah! I love reading your writing and truth be told, I am not a sports fan but if your sports writing is this entertaining I just may have to pay attention to sports in the future!