Another week down!

Its hard to believe I have already been in DC over three weeks, but so the time flies when you are busy having fun... so let's recap this week at the National Journal.

Monday: Event day! This means it was up around 5:45 to be at the Newseum by 7 AM for an event hosted by National Journal. This was probably one of the more interesting events I have been to because we had Health and Human Services Sec. Kathleen Sebelius on hand to discuss the health care bill which had numerous aspects take effect this week. She discussed what the Affordable Care Act is supposed to do and answered a few questions from the audience. Once the event was over, I headed back to NJ and burrowed downstairs with Final Cut to edit the video and export the files. That was a headache to an extent but I learned how to squeeze and compress audio and video files.

Tuesday: Terry Michael morning. Every Tuesday and Thursday, we will likely be having class with program director Terry Michael who will be giving a lesson in politics. The topic for Tuesday's class was American Political Parties... this was right up my alley because I had spent all last semester studying them. I sounded like a know it all in class, but who cares. He talked for a couple hours about things I pretty much already knew, but then I headed downstairs to a ton of work. More video and exporting for an event that took place that morning and was not able to attend due to class. I also learned how to use Brightcove and publish things online... or at least I hope I learned how to do this... will see if I can do it again next week.

Wednesday: I would call this the day of Final Cut Hades. Everything that could go wrong with a video seemed to go wrong. We could not get things to load properly and the exporting process was made even more difficult when it would not export at the correct aspect ratio. Ahh, it was extremely frustrating. But I was able to note that I would likely be stuck at work late and the people at my housing complex fixed me a late plate for when I returned home. Thankfully.

Thursday: Another Terry Michael morning, but this time we had a guest speaker: Nathan Gonzalez of the Rothenberg Report. We learned about the Congressional Campaign Committees, and we learned a bit about the prediction of races and how they determine which ones are going to be close. He was really helpful in giving a picture of what these groups do for their candidates. Afterwards, I headed downstairs to work for magazine day. This is the day when NJ is produced and all the content has to go up online. It is a long afternoon because the content is not usually ready to go online until about 2/3 so that means that we are pretty much at the mercy of the editors or whenever the writers finish. The hardest part is making sure that graphics get put in correctly and that links and photos are properly published. On days like that, we dont get to leave the office until after 7 PM many times.

Friday: This is a much less hectic day and everyone is just ready to get out of their for the weekend. Our publication is somewhat unique because we are all about politics and very little happens on the weekend. So we are pretty much a M-F operation. I like that stability. Today, we finished up exporting videos and cleaned up some videos that needed further editing. We also were given training on the new system that will be coming out later in the fall. It looks quite impressive and we are slowly going to be getting up to speed in the upcoming months. That took up most of the afternoon and then I also prepared some pages for next week's events.

There is a big Workforce Conference next week that will likely have people working some longer hours...

Sooners in Washington: Football Saturday

You can take the fan out of the Oklahoma, but you can’t take Oklahoma out of the fan.

That fact became quite clear Saturday when a young, female Sooner fan screamed out “Kevin Wilson sucks” at a bar in Crystal City, Va. OU managed a 27-24 win over Air Force that afternoon.

Almost every Saturday in the fall, the OU alumni group in Washington D.C. meets at Mackeys Pub in Virginia to watch the Sooners grind it out.

You might think that because it is a Washington D.C. or urban group that typical Okie-lore might be lost on these folks.

Quick answer: Hell no.

The beer was flowing, no wine spritzers at this shindig, and people were letting loose like they just took their seats in 90 degrees of blazing glory at Owen Field.

Flat screen televisions line the bar and the rest of the restaurant. Every screen had the Sooners game on, except for one.

Lurking at the end of the bar was the lone Florida fan who came with his friend and quietly asked the girl behind the bar to turn the smallest television to the Florida-Tennessee game.

Initial reactions by the Sooner mass were not pleasant, and the move was not well received. Yet an old man in the corner shouted out something about southern hospitality, and the point was moot.

A defense contractor from the area, a regular at the bar, made the mistake of coming in that afternoon to a room of groaning Sooner fans. He made the mistake of asking if there were any Air Force fans in the house.

The woman next to him, who had probably had one-too-many margaritas, just laughed at him.

It was not a great day for Sooner football. After the first drive, the team looked ice-cold and could not put a series together.

Just like the fans back in Norman, the East Coast crowd "wasn’t gonna have none of that."

Defensive coordinator Brent Venables was raked over the coals in the second half, and apparently, Landry Jones couldn’t throw his way out of a paper bag.

Plus, what is a good Sooner game without a drunken spat.

A man seated away from the bar let out a small yell when Florida State took a sizable lead over BYU. OU played Florida State the week before and sent the Seminoles home with their tails tucked between their legs.

The young woman at the bar, mentioned previously for her temporary disdain for coach Wilson, slurred a loud response.

“I don’t give a fuck about Florida State,” she said.

This ensued a bickering match, while the condescending sports fanatic tried to massage his ego by informing the drunken woman that the Sooners needed Florida State to play well so that it made the Sooners win look that more impressive.

Moral of this story: you cannot reason with Sooner fans at a football game, especially when alcohol is involved. It doesn’t matter what venue you choose.

The game dragged on, and just like OU’s student section, the crowd started to file out after halftime.

People placed their final orders at the bar, and the next shift of bartenders and waiters showed up. Upon arrival, one woman looked to rescue her fellow employee with a much need caffeine boost.

Spending an afternoon with a bunch of mildly disgruntled Sooner fans, the coffee buzz is understandable.

The game clocked wound down, the Sooner mass filed, or rather stumbled, out, and the OU fans went out into the world.

They will do great things.

But maybe tomorrow.

Week in Review: Sept. 13-17

Well, it was another fine week at National Journal, but a hard week in some respects because the ball really got rolling for me this week.

Monday: This was a normal 8-5 day for me. We are still trying to get passwords and access to all the websites and networks at work set up for me, but Monday we took care of quite a few of them. I also was given the assignment of working with a reporter to do an audio recording for a story that was the cover story of National Journal. It was about military families and I needed to set up a time for him to come in and record his narration track. I worked on the website a bit, and it was my co-worker Michelle's second-too-last day in the office.

Tuesday: Today was Michelle's final day before heading off to be the business producer for the Washington Post. She is really fabulous and knowledgeable about her job and I know she will do great. We had a cupcake tasting contest in her celebration with hellohello cupcakes and georgetown cupcakes. I am not sure who won, maybe georgetown?? I also was able to record the audio for the military piece I was working on, and I managed to edit a third of it that afternoon. Putting my audacity skills to good use.

Wednesday: Today was more audio and more editing. It hit us that Michelle was gone, but that just meant more responsibility for me. Everywhere I went in the office the first week they asked me if I was the new Michelle. It is kind of a daunting thought. I finished the audio edits and did some work on the homepage. I learned more of the ins and outs of Moveable Type and our content management system. Wednesday was key because Thursday is our big/long day for the magazine and it took some preparations.

Thursday: We knew Thursday was going to be a long day, and it was: 12 hours. Yes, but so goes the life of a journalist. We were at the Newseum at 7 in the morning to shoot a policy summit on jobs and healthcare (an updated issue report on this event should follow in the coming week!) and we were there til the late morning. We came back and Theresa took charge of the magazine changes while I spent my time getting the event video ready to post. Once I had that taken care of, it was time to upload my audio files to the webpage and make any changes I needed to for the magazine updates. We also went down to the studio to prepare for Friday's day-long studio interviews for a pilot program we are thinking about. I finally rolled out of there sometime after 7 pm.

Friday: Since I was at the office for so long on Thursday, they gave me a break Friday. I had an appointment with my intern group to visit CNN and John King (who we never actually got to see...) at noon so they gave me the morning off. It was a nice mental health morning. CNN was nice and the executive producer of John King USA, Michelle Jaconi, spoke to us for an hour about political reporting and her work at CNN and Meet the Press. She is a wonderful speaker and I very much enjoyed listening to her perspective. Made it back over to the Watergate for work around 2:30. I helped with the afternoon interviews... save the day with the bobby pin... and finished up with some loose ends and then headed home. Friday was a much more calm day than the day before and I think everyone was just spent at that point.

Hopefully next week at work looks to go as smooth or better.

Michelle Jaconi: a Bright Future in Journalism

Journalism may be dying; journalism may be on its last leg; there is no future for profitable reporting.

These are the lines that student journalists hear constantly, and for a budding journalist this dreary outlook is never motivating. It makes you question why in gods name you picked journalism in the first place.

Amid all the forlorn attitudes and the layoffs, sometimes there is a glimmer of hope. It may be hard to see past the bluster, but when you find that reassurance it almost makes the daily grind of interviews, long days on the Hill, or HTML coding worth the headache.

Michelle Jaconi, executive producer of CNN’s John King USA, was not the likely candidate for a political journalist. She did not come from a connected family or attend a private school with the future forerunners for the Democratic presidential nomination.

She attended a public school in California that was soon closed after her graduation due to lack of state funding. She said the meager funds the state had were being pumped into low-income areas where metal detectors were a priority.

She was an above average, public school student with a knack for asking “why?” who wound up at Georgetown, found her niche in political journalism and has been successful ever since.

She has been lucky enough to produce for shows like Meet the Press and State of the Union. She has worked for journalists who honed their craft and really researched their topic.

She said one of the things she wonders some times, being what she called “one of Tim Russert’s girls,” if she over-researched things too much. But it all comes from a passion for what she does.

She is a mom and a wife, yet she works 12 hours a day on a regular workweek. She says you can’t be the best journalist, wife, mom and friend at the same time and to expect that is not realistic.

You just have to be the best you can be. Part of that means being right.

One piece of advice she gave to the room of budding journalists was to always be right. Many times young people want to be first on the scoop, but she said that the combination of being right and being first is more important and will serve you well.

So what good is being right when there is no money or no audience to listen?

She works for a company that gets slammed in the media for falling behind MSNBC and FOX News, but she has a bright outlook on the future of journalism at CNN.

While CNN may struggle in primetime, they are doing quite well online. During the daytime they also do well. She gave a much more complex, but wide ranging picture of the state of journalism.

She made the future sound like the possibilities are endless for those who are willing to work hard and who strive to do their best for their company and their sources. They must also strive to do their best for their audience.

There is a world outside the journalism and more specifically the political journalism bubble. And it is not a world that is closing in as fast as we might think.

It was refreshing to know that sometimes, the clouds are not as grey and do not hang as low as they might seem.

Middle Class in America

So, as part of my studies in Washington D.C., I have decided to follow an issue that the National Journal and many other media outlets are covering and that is the state of the middle class in the United States. Right now, the economic downturn has very negatively impacted the middle class and their perception of the economy, healthcare and politics in general. I am working with National Journal this fall who is studying the current state of Middle America.

First Week Interning at the Journal

We'll this week was a short work week, but I didn't mind because it gave me a chance to meet my fellow interns the day before our program with the Washington Center for Politics and Journalism began...

Monday: This was the day I scoped everything out. Walked the three and change miles to work... I walk because that is the best way to see a city (I don't do this every day to work mind you though). I figured out which door I would be going in and which metro stop I would get off at. It was nice to understand everything before I had to be there bright and early the next day.

Tuesday: First Day! This was the first day for the program and internship with the NationalJournal.com. We talked about the program with our director Terry Michaels throughout the morning and we headed off to our internships after lunch. I met up with my boss and coworkers who I must say are great people. I think I will enjoy my semester there very much. They pretty much just gave me the tour and explained a few things and sent me home for the day.

Wednesday: This was my first full day at the National Journal, and they got the ball rolling with me early on. I learned about their content management system and how to upload or edit stories. I also learned more about this new relaunch they have planned for this fall. I am really excited about all the changes they have going on there. For some of the older people, I think it scares them, but for me and my group of younger, multimedia savy workers, it is quite a fun time. I also got a chance to help with some set designs for shows they produce and the funniest/scariest part of the day was when I cut my finger with a box cutter. I have become quite good at typing without my pointer finger this week though...

Thursday: This day was more training with the website and our office was slammed because the National Journal magazine gets finished on Thursday and we have to upload it to go online for Saturday. I only stayed my hours, but apparently some of my bosses stayed around til 10:30 working on the main page and changing out links to stories. We also prepared for an event we had to attend bright and early the next morning.

Friday: On Friday, we attended an event by NJ and Allstate that talked about the role of the economy and the middle class. We filmed the event for National Journal and then took the video back to the office to edit. They use Final Cut Pro, and I was glad to be looking at a system I was familiar with after being thrust into a strange CMS. I also caught an error on the front page of the magazine online and was able to go into the system and change things. That was a moment of accomplishment.

And that was pretty much the week in a nutshell. This week is a trip to the FEC and John King at CNN. Should be fun... if my sliced finger ever heals......

Washington so far...

So I arrived in Washington D.C. for my first few days in the city, and boy has it been a whirlwind. I have been trying to get set before I start my internship Tuesday. Here is kind of a rundown of what's been going on...

Thursday: Flew to DC from OKC. The flight to Chicago was delayed, but my impatience was fine and I managed to get through it. We got here and grabbed some food, and pretty much just hung out the first night. I say we because my dad was in town to attend the APSA conference.

Friday: Today was the first of a sightseeing day. We went to the national zoo, where I have been multiple times and love, and we also lugged my bags to my new place in D.C. Afterwards we took the afternoon to walk around the White House and visit that area. We went to the Palm for dinner that night... can't go wrong there.

Saturday: Day 2 of sightseeing commenced early with a trip to the newseum. It is like a journalists dream museum because it covers some of journalism's biggest historic events from Watergate to 9/11. We also viewed the Air and Space museum. It was alright, but I am not a huge fan of planes. I liked it, but think it is better suited for a 10 year old boy. We spent time walking and eating, and I found the radio broadcast of the Sooners football game. Long day though and I fell asleep at halftime.

Sunday: Well, it was time to say goodbye to Dad and head off for brunch at TMH (Thompson Markward Hall). My room is kind of like a closet, but it functions, and the internet is terrible, but I will learn to adjust. I spent the day getting acclimated and met some of the girls. Also got back to my nightly ritual of eating a green apple...

Looking ahead: Monday I meet up with the other interns for drinks and I will probably go find my work so I know where I am going on Tuesday so I don't get lost. A trip to the grocery store may very well be in order as well.

All for now.

Week of Preparations

Well, this week has been a week of preparing to be in DC full-time starting Sept. 7th.

I leave for the East Coast Thursday, as in tomorrow, and will be gone four months... a crazy thing to think about, at least for me. This week has been all about getting ready and getting packed, and of course, seeing my friends and family as much as I can before I go. I think I have had lunch plans every day since I have come back from San Francisco, trying to fit everyone in. My week has kind of looked like this:

Sunday: Errands in Norman and OKC, packing, and visiting

Monday: Errands, packing, visiting, and an evening of copy editing.

Tuesday: Errands, packing visiting, and another evening of copy editing.

Wednesday : and this is pure guess, but errands, packing, and copy editing....