Friday, April 13, 2007

The life and times of a Government reporter

Wow, I look back and realize that no matter how much crap I give my friends about not updating their blogs (*coughcoughRobin*), I'm even more of a slacker.

I have an excuse. Since January, I have been the "campus politics" reporter at the paper. This is an interesting job. At this school, the student government is autonomous from the administration and controls nearly $11 million of student fee money. There is a lot of apathy among the students here, but it really is important to know who controls your money. I've learned more about the student government than I ever thought possible. I'm actually quite confident that this is good preparation for covering the daily activities of any other level of government. From what I've seen, the Student Senate meetings here are pretty similar to say, City Council meetings. As much time as I spend sitting through long, tedious meetings, I've come to really enjoy the political reporting. There are certainly drawbacks, as with any beat, but I like understanding how the government works. Even at what seems like such a minor level, being on the inside is fun. I hope that someday I can keep a government beat at whatever paper I work for.

Anyway, the real point is that last term, I spent nearly 20 hours per week sitting through budget meetings, so blogging was not on my list of things to take the time to do. I've been trying to decide what types of things I'd like to write about. Technically, I'm also the federal politics reporter here, although I haven't had much time for federal stories, so I can't really write commentary like I used to. Something about having to appear objective. I'd like to do something more like "Mr. Burns" and write about my experiences as a reporter, or this may become more of a personal blog than it used to be. In any case, I will try to post more often.

For now, I'm off to wait on the primary election results for my beat. There were a lot of candidates this year, and the general election starts Monday. They're really keeping me working.

2 comments:

Mr. Burns said...

Whatever you model this blog into, just keep posting. Keep writing.

Copy Editor said...

I am sure going to try.

For now, it's time to prepare to cover the general election executive debate here on campus. I keep trying to tell the elections board that a mud wrestling match would be way more entertaining. They said "maybe next year." ;)