Feb.
25, 2005
WASHINGTON - Several inches of snow ending
a period of relative warmth
reflected the varied level of activity experienced this week
by one
area intern, said sources close to the student.
My fellow interns were befuddled when I sent out an e-mail
lauding the
snow. The Colorado and Massachussetts interns replied snidely
about me
not knowing what real snow is. Oh well, I suppose it's a
a natural
manifestation of my "naive, Southern charm" that
compromises for my
lack of any sort of stereotypical twangy accent.
The work week started out very light as I continued to pursue
my two
stories from my last blog entry. My story/graph on black
members of
Congress has been more or less pushed to the back of my mind;
Guy, the
other intern, and I are focusing on tracking down defeated
congressmen
for our biennial "Where Are They Now?" segment.
We've gotten our list
down to six MIA congressmen, who we have yet to cut through
the jungle
of voice mails, irate press secretaries and dead-end former
office
staffers to find. I was elated to learn from Guy that this
segment
usually takes up most or all of one AM edition of CongressDaily.
So
an entire edition of this newspaper will be done by Guy and
me. Hose me down now because I'm stoked like a bonfire.
Well after Guy left on Wednesday for the rest of the week,
the snow
started pouring down. Not only was I like a fish out of
water in this
stuff, but it actually made me late in getting to a press
conference!
Coming out of the metro station, I walked about six blocks
in the
wrong direction trying to find the National Press Club.
It was obvious
I needed to adjust to the weather, so I cranked up "Viva
Las Vegas" in
my cd player to keep a sunny mentality in the blizzard.
I finally made
it and got to sit behind Ed, another intern in my program
who works
for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. I managed to scrape out
a brief
before the PM deadline, and all was well.
Then came the watershed. A friend that I have met since
coming to
Washington is a lobbyist for an anti-"Don't Ask, Don't
Tell" lobbying
firm. He had been buzzing about some important congressional
happenings related to his work for a while, and finally
on Thursday
came the big moment. Several House members were going to
introduce
the first repeal legislation of the 1993 "Don't Ask,
Don't Tell" law,
headed by Rep. Marty Meehan, D-Mass. Well I jumped on it.
I had
contacts within the lobby that spearheaded this effort,
and I managed
to pop out a brief on it without any of my editors recommending
the
story to me. I offered it to Keith, my exec. editor, and
he said if The New York Times didn't pick up the story Friday,
then they would
use my brief. (The reasoning is that congressional press
staffers
obviously read from a lot of news sources, and there's
no sense in
wasting good CongessDaily page space if our audience is
getting it
somewhere else).
Well this morning the only paper to print
an article
on the legislation was the LA Times, and since we're
the East Coast
establishment, we don't pay attention to them. Long story
short, my
brief, which I did all on my own, was put in the PM. Words
can't
express how self-efficacious I feel. Now I look forward
to pushing a
feature on the legislation on Wednesday when a press conference
is
held by my friend, several gay rights organizations,
and the
House members offering up the legislation. I swear Washington
runs on
connections. Just read this week's issue of National
Journal.
Until next time, next
entry>>
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