Latest work

4/8/08
This morning, I went to an event at 6:30 a.m. hosted by the Communications Workers of America, or CWA, at the in the Hyatt Regency ballroom near the Capitol. Speakers included Senators and Democratic presidential nominees Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, as well as few other representatives and officials (whom, sadly, no one really stayed around to listen to). They each spoke to the crowd for about 30 minutes, more or less, with Clinton going first followed immediately by Obama. Each received thunderous applause and several standing ovations. I brought my camera and took several photos and videos (coming soon), and was able to kneel right below the podium where they spoke, about 5 feet away. I also got to shake each candidate's hand on their way out of the event! Clinton was very friendly, and seems to have gotten much better at public speaking and engaging with her audience recently. Obama seemed tired but was a great orator as always, and shook my hand on the way out and said "thank you for coming." My fellow reporter from TRNS took a photo of me with Obama speaking in the background--it was the closest thing I could get to a real photo since there was sort of a barrier separating the speakers from the crowd. Maybe I'll have a chance for a photo op again in the future *Note: there is also plenty of Clinton audio coverage on the site, but since this journal is a place for me to keep a record of my own work and I was only responsible for the Obama audio, that is all I put on here.

Clinton, Obama echo one another on issues

Obama: It's not the Department of Management, it's the Department of Labor (audio)

Obama rejects special interest group influence (audio)

Obama: Americans deserve health care, "you can take that to the bank" (audio)

Obama promises to sign Employee Free Choice Act (audio)

Obama's Patriot Employer Act will stop tax breaks to outsourcers (audio)

Obama pledges $ 150 billion to green technology (audio)

Obama offers tax breaks to middle-class families (audio)

Obama echoes Clinton on broadspan internet proposal (audio)

Obama says to stop spending money in Iraq, rebuild American infrastructure instead (audio)

Obama says no to 100 years in Iraq (audio)

Senator and Republican presidential nominee John McCain was also in Washington today, and spoke at an event with Veterans for Freedom on the Iraq war. I did not attend, but one of my colleagues did and said McCain left very quickly without any comments or photos.

Clinton also spoke again at a March for Dimes event in the afternoon,which I was scheduled to go to but ended up skipping because it took so long to edit the audio from the morning event.

Another TRNS reporter wentand got a photo with Clinton because it was a much smaller event, so I was kind of upset that I missed out on it.

Around 2:30 pm, I went to the Dirksen Senate building to help one of our reporters who was covering the hearing with General Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker about the state of affairs in Iraq. I just watched his laptop and took a few notes. The hearing lasted all day and will continue tomorrow, and basically consisted of senators grilling the two about why there is no exit strategy for Iraq, among other things.

All in all, I got up at 5:30 am to get to my first event, worked solidly until 4:30 pm (the earliest I've left so far) when someone finally relieved me from the Petraeus hearing because I hadn't eaten all day (I have yet to have a "real" lunch where I actually leave the office and take an hour off to eat; usually we just grab food on our way back to the office and eat while editing, but today I didn't even have time to do that), then got back to the UC Center just in time for my Campaigns and Elections course at 6:00. It's a really interesting course, and today we had the executive director of the Democratic National Committee, Tom McMahon,as a guest speaker. But I was so tired from the day that I was struggling to keep my eyes open. It was a really long day, and I don't understand how people can do this for a living (and usually for much longer and more severe hours than I'm experiencing). While it's fun for now and is a great learning experience, I don't think I could handle it for much longer than ten weeks. The aspect of journalism and news that I most enjoy is just the learning experience, because in order to report on something you really have to know something about the subject matter. Because of this, I've had the opportunity to learn a lot more about things that don't directly concern me or that I wouldn't pay much attention to otherwise. It's a great way to escape a really narrow and self-centered view of the world and current events, and try to understand things from other people's perspectives. So while I enjoy the thrill and excitement of news, I don't think it's the career for me, and I realize now that it's the learning that accompanies writing that I truly value. So, we'll see where that can take me in the future.

4/7/08
For the first half of the day I was "czar" which means I am responsible for staying in the office, listening in on conference calls and taking notes, answering phones, checking emails, and compiling events to cover for the next day. It's actually a really nice break from running around all week, and there is still substantial work to do so I don't mind. In the morning, I took a conference call from the Clinton campaign that discussed her plans for funding breast cancer research and treatment. A lot of callers wanted to ask the campaign representatives about the resignation of her chief strategist, Mark Penn, but they declined to comment on the subject and adhered instead to policy matters.

Clinton campaign reveals breast cancer policy intiatives

Conference Call: Clinton campaign discusses breast cancer research and treatment plan (audio)

At 1:30 in the afternoon, I went to a discussion at the Heritage Foundation, which is "a research and educational institute - a think tank - whose mission is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense." The UK shadow secretary of state for defense and the nominee for the US ambassador to NATO each gave presentations on the recent developments to the treaty agreement in light of last week's summit at Bucharest, and their opinions on its future relevance.

Heritage Foundation speakers say NATO is crucial to international security

UK shadow secretary says Lisbon Treaty could compromise NATO's primacy (audio)

NATO wants to work with the Russian government, not against it (audio)

Last weekend
On Friday, our center offered us pro-rated tickets to the Wizards v. Heat basketball game and a bunch of us went and sat together. They won, so that was exciting. After the game, most of the 21 year olds went out to bars, and since my roommates and I are 20 (the worst age ever invented) we just came home and watched Sex in the City reruns. I've never really watched that show before, and I decided I don't like it... maybe because I associate it with being depressed about staying at home instead of being able to go out and have fun . I'm at least glad that Caitlyn, Alyssa and I are all 20 so at least we have someone to not be able to go out with. It would be really lame if I were the only one who couldn't go.

On Saturday, my roommates and I walked down to the Georgetown area with Shannon, another girl from our program, and checked out the university, which is pretty small and really beautiful. It looks very classic and collegiate, with a lot of historic and unique architecture. It definitely feels a lot more "distinguished" than UCSB, but I'll take 70-degree year round weather over that. We did some shopping for work clothes and other stuff we needed at some of the stores around, and checked out some cafes and restaurants. We ate at a falafel restaurant that was really good, I've never tried it before and I liked it a lot. We also visited the "Old Stone House," which is literally just that, and is apparently the oldest structure in DC. According to the tour guide, it is 85% original but has been restored for tourists. They sell souvenirs and historical paraphernalia like fake Constitutions, triangle hats, Confederate and Union flags, etc. Saturday night was pretty frustrating, because again there's very little to do if you're under 21, but SO MUCH to do if you are 21. We went to one of the most popular downtown districts, Adams Morgan, to see if we could get in anywhere and just hang out for the night. There's an online article that tells which places have college nights, all ages nights, etc. We showed up at 8:45, which is apparently too late to get into the places that admit minors earlier (usually they stop at 9:00), so we will probably try to come earlier this weekend or just find a college night to go to. We ended up getting pretty frustrated after walking all over the place and being continually rejected, even from the only coffee shop, which cards after 9:00 as well because apparently they serve wine or something. Finally we just decided to go to a movie. We sat in on Leatherheads for about 5 minutes after deciding there was no way we could sit through the whole thing, and went over to Stop Loss which was also a terrible choice. Caitlyn, our resident Republican, aptly called it "liberal propaganda" and intentionally slept through the entire thing. Coming from someone who is pretty liberal myself, I had to agree with her that it was pretty terrible. When we finally got out of the horrible movie, it was freezing and raining outside when we walked home, which was a perfect end to a perfect night....

Sunday we decided to go over to the Smithsonian and check out some of the displays. A few of the buildings are under repair, but we saw the Museum of Natural History and the diamond gallery, and a few other sections. It was REALLY crowded with tourists, so it wasn't an ideal time to go, but since we work all week we pretty much only have the weekends when everyone else shows up too. The Natural History musem just had a lot of stuffed animals, which was cool. We also watched a video on evolution and natural selection, which Caitlyn also promptly dismissed . The diamond gallery was really neat, there was antique jewelry on display like Marie Antoinette's 20-karat diamond earrings, the enormous tiara that Napoleon gave to his wife as a gift, the Hope diamond, and more. Later, we came back to our room and watched Superbad.

I'm having fun but definitely looking forward to finding more things to do on the weekends. We also have some trips coming up with the program to Charlottesville VA, Gettysburg (which I'm not sure I'll go to), and Philadelphia, so those will be cool too. I'm also trying to plan trips to New York and Boston with my roommates.

Bye for now... miss you all and hope you have a great week!!