Texas Highlights
Hey y'all, I'm back from Texas. I'm running off of eighteen hours of sleep in the last six days, so I'm hoping I can make sense. Also, this is probably going to eat up your livejournal friends page, so I apologize.
My mission in Texas was to cover the horse race, between Obama and Clinton and also the Repubs. McCain and Huckabee. I went with 10 other journalism students from UW. We all split off and covered different events.
If you want to check out a couple of my stories, you can click here and here.
I arrived in Austin on Thursday with my friend Cailin and we were picked up at the airport by this guy. Devin is a Political Science major from UW and can network his way into any situation, so he was recruited by my professor. I had to include the picture, because wow.
Anyways, Friday I woke up early and headed down to Clinton's main headquarters in downtown-ish Austin (next to the airport). They were swamped, it took fifteen minutes for them to get a press secretary out to me. However, they were nicer than their Seattle associates and one woman offered to drive me to a polling station (for early voting primary voters) at a local grocery store. Buut, in less than three minutes I was kicked out.
Apparently in Texas, they have a different set of rules for reporters, you can't be within 100 feet of a polling station. Heh, they even made me call the Texas Secretary of State so they could drive that point home. After that bust, Devin picked me and Cailin up and drove us over to Obama land. It was Austin's blues district, with a heavy amount of African American and Latino voters. They were setting up for a party at a local blues club and I spent the afternoon cleaning up, pulling kegs around and making catchy Obama signs. Finally, that evening, I went to the Hillary Clinton rally. She showed up an hour late (apparently the Clintons are notorious for late appearances in Texas). I was standing in the press box next to the Spanish speaking station, so it was hard to hear. I'm pretty sure I heard most of her speech in Spanish.
Saturday was pretty uneventful. I went to a meeting for Texans who were very, very liberal. One woman said, "Dennis Kucinich isn't liberal enough for me." It was a cool story though, I didn't expect to meet people like that in Texas. Then I went back to the Clinton office and hung out for a little bit. They fed me food and gave me a "A girl's night out with Hillary" T-shirt.
Sunday was interesting. I went to church. It was the largest church in the nation (one of the churches you see on early morning TV), with Joel Osteen, a pastor who really liked talking about all the books he wrote. When we showed up, we saw secret service hanging out and later discovered Bill and Chelsea Clinton were in church that day. I talked to people afterwards and most didn't seem to care but one woman said, "I pray that Hillary wins!" It was cute.
Monday I was determined to meet the conservatives. The whole time, we were stationed in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio (pretty much the most liberal areas of the state). So we drove out to a small town called Eilleen, Texas, which incorporated Fort Hood. We stopped in at the Chamber of Commerce and met with the organization's president who told us we came to the right place (tons of conservatives). Then we met with some locals, they said George Bush was huge in their town, and even went to church there when he goes down to the ranch. Also that night, we went to the John McCain rally in Waco. It was a small crowd, and people were allowed to ask questions. At one point, McCain became a little bit of a hothead and told one guy that his solution to reducing oil prices was flat out wrong. He didn't even want to listen to the guy.
That night my professor got really sick and ended up in the hospital. He's alright now, but we were freaking out. He'd also brought his son along with him, so we all rallied back and took care of him.
Tuesday, I went with six other group members to speak a the University of Texas to an intro-level journalism class. We just told them about our experiences and showed them the website. At first people were really kind about it, saying we did a great job, etc. etc. Then some of them started attacking us for our coverage. They said there was too much Obama content on the site, and we explained that the Clinton headquarters had restricted our media access in Washington. There were a few more nit-picky comments, but overall, they said they were impressed we had the stamina to keep up with it all.
Also that day I did a couple live interviews on the radio. The first was for 101.1 KOHO (which I did with a group member Charles) and the other I did solo on KIRO's Ron and Don show. It was interesting to have people covering our coverage. It was also nerve-wracking to think of things to say live. I kept thinking the interview would be over, but they kept me on for like 10 minutes. Ron and Don were joking that they'd send me an MP3 so that I can get extra credit for my class. They also said, "Your parents are probably listening so you should tell them there is no alcohol on the trip." I said, "Haha, umm, none."
In the evening, we went over to Obama headquarters and there were some really nice people there. One woman greeted us with a hug and offered us soda. She said, "Young people like soda right?" Everyone at the headquarters had to go caucus, but they let us stay in the office if we agreed to close up. I couldn't believe how trusting they were.
After that it got really cool. I got to see Obama. Finally! He was speaking downtown and I think we showed five hours early, mostly due to excitement. At first I thought the press box was kind of crappy, because we couldn't see very well. But I walked over to the other side of the gate and I was maybe 15 ft. from the stage. When he spoke, I was the only press person clapping but I didn't care. It was a great speech. Afterwards, we were scouring the crowd and we saw Jesse Jackson walking around. I ran down and interviewed him and then a swarm of press people crowded in on us. I had to move back so I wouldn't knock Jackson over. He gave me some great quotes. I felt bad though, because one of the cameramen hit him in the head with a camera and he stood there dazed for a few minutes.
In a little while, I'm going to make a little video diary of the trip and post it on our website and I'll put it up here too. My laptop crapped out down there so I wasn't able to post any video. Not much else to say, it's weird to be back.
My mission in Texas was to cover the horse race, between Obama and Clinton and also the Repubs. McCain and Huckabee. I went with 10 other journalism students from UW. We all split off and covered different events.
If you want to check out a couple of my stories, you can click here and here.
I arrived in Austin on Thursday with my friend Cailin and we were picked up at the airport by this guy. Devin is a Political Science major from UW and can network his way into any situation, so he was recruited by my professor. I had to include the picture, because wow.
Anyways, Friday I woke up early and headed down to Clinton's main headquarters in downtown-ish Austin (next to the airport). They were swamped, it took fifteen minutes for them to get a press secretary out to me. However, they were nicer than their Seattle associates and one woman offered to drive me to a polling station (for early voting primary voters) at a local grocery store. Buut, in less than three minutes I was kicked out.
Apparently in Texas, they have a different set of rules for reporters, you can't be within 100 feet of a polling station. Heh, they even made me call the Texas Secretary of State so they could drive that point home. After that bust, Devin picked me and Cailin up and drove us over to Obama land. It was Austin's blues district, with a heavy amount of African American and Latino voters. They were setting up for a party at a local blues club and I spent the afternoon cleaning up, pulling kegs around and making catchy Obama signs. Finally, that evening, I went to the Hillary Clinton rally. She showed up an hour late (apparently the Clintons are notorious for late appearances in Texas). I was standing in the press box next to the Spanish speaking station, so it was hard to hear. I'm pretty sure I heard most of her speech in Spanish.
Saturday was pretty uneventful. I went to a meeting for Texans who were very, very liberal. One woman said, "Dennis Kucinich isn't liberal enough for me." It was a cool story though, I didn't expect to meet people like that in Texas. Then I went back to the Clinton office and hung out for a little bit. They fed me food and gave me a "A girl's night out with Hillary" T-shirt.
Sunday was interesting. I went to church. It was the largest church in the nation (one of the churches you see on early morning TV), with Joel Osteen, a pastor who really liked talking about all the books he wrote. When we showed up, we saw secret service hanging out and later discovered Bill and Chelsea Clinton were in church that day. I talked to people afterwards and most didn't seem to care but one woman said, "I pray that Hillary wins!" It was cute.
Monday I was determined to meet the conservatives. The whole time, we were stationed in Austin, Dallas, Houston and San Antonio (pretty much the most liberal areas of the state). So we drove out to a small town called Eilleen, Texas, which incorporated Fort Hood. We stopped in at the Chamber of Commerce and met with the organization's president who told us we came to the right place (tons of conservatives). Then we met with some locals, they said George Bush was huge in their town, and even went to church there when he goes down to the ranch. Also that night, we went to the John McCain rally in Waco. It was a small crowd, and people were allowed to ask questions. At one point, McCain became a little bit of a hothead and told one guy that his solution to reducing oil prices was flat out wrong. He didn't even want to listen to the guy.
That night my professor got really sick and ended up in the hospital. He's alright now, but we were freaking out. He'd also brought his son along with him, so we all rallied back and took care of him.
Tuesday, I went with six other group members to speak a the University of Texas to an intro-level journalism class. We just told them about our experiences and showed them the website. At first people were really kind about it, saying we did a great job, etc. etc. Then some of them started attacking us for our coverage. They said there was too much Obama content on the site, and we explained that the Clinton headquarters had restricted our media access in Washington. There were a few more nit-picky comments, but overall, they said they were impressed we had the stamina to keep up with it all.
Also that day I did a couple live interviews on the radio. The first was for 101.1 KOHO (which I did with a group member Charles) and the other I did solo on KIRO's Ron and Don show. It was interesting to have people covering our coverage. It was also nerve-wracking to think of things to say live. I kept thinking the interview would be over, but they kept me on for like 10 minutes. Ron and Don were joking that they'd send me an MP3 so that I can get extra credit for my class. They also said, "Your parents are probably listening so you should tell them there is no alcohol on the trip." I said, "Haha, umm, none."
In the evening, we went over to Obama headquarters and there were some really nice people there. One woman greeted us with a hug and offered us soda. She said, "Young people like soda right?" Everyone at the headquarters had to go caucus, but they let us stay in the office if we agreed to close up. I couldn't believe how trusting they were.
After that it got really cool. I got to see Obama. Finally! He was speaking downtown and I think we showed five hours early, mostly due to excitement. At first I thought the press box was kind of crappy, because we couldn't see very well. But I walked over to the other side of the gate and I was maybe 15 ft. from the stage. When he spoke, I was the only press person clapping but I didn't care. It was a great speech. Afterwards, we were scouring the crowd and we saw Jesse Jackson walking around. I ran down and interviewed him and then a swarm of press people crowded in on us. I had to move back so I wouldn't knock Jackson over. He gave me some great quotes. I felt bad though, because one of the cameramen hit him in the head with a camera and he stood there dazed for a few minutes.
In a little while, I'm going to make a little video diary of the trip and post it on our website and I'll put it up here too. My laptop crapped out down there so I wasn't able to post any video. Not much else to say, it's weird to be back.