I spent this week at City Hall. My mentor is the city hall reporter, so he has to go to lots of meetings with city council members, the mayor, things like that. Often, he has to write about complicated financial issues that the city is dealing with. More often than not, he won't give me that kind of a story. I'm just not ready for it. But I did pick up a cool investigative piece that I will devote a separate blog entry to. I have to wait for it to run, which should be this Monday. What I will say now is that it's amazing how careful politicians are about what they will tell you. Mostly they will defer comment or decline all together. But more on that next week...
I went to a press conference about this new flights that Pittsburgh has to Ft. Lauderdale (I guess it's important because Ft. Lauderdale has connections to all of Latin America, which makes it easy to do business). I got the smallest thing wrong and forgot to respond to a PR person's email about making a correction, and she got really pissed. I had to call her and pretty much just listen to her chew me out while I apologized to her. There's a time and a place to argue and that's not it, so I definitely took my medicine in that respect. You learn and move on.
I also pitched this story that is running in tomorrow's paper:
http://www.post-gazette.com/news/politics-state/2014/07/19/NYC-billionaire-to-spend-money-in-Pennsylvania-gubernatorial-campaign/stories/201407160044
So definitely check that out if you have a few minutes.
I think it is cool that you have such a big role in the paper and are contributing to the reports. It sounds like you are learning a lot and I look forward to hearing more about your stories!
ReplyDeleteCongrats on playing such a big part writing for the paper! I've definitely been chewed out by publicists/PR people in the past so I know your pain.
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