My life as a Real Reporter began just about a month ago, on a balmy (by Chicago standards) January day at the Pennsylvania State Capitol here in Harrisburg. The legislature was not in session, no bills had been proposed and the governor’s budget address was but a distant blip, barely visible on my horizon. Reporting moved at a comfortably moderate pace, and I wrote stories about topics I pretty much understood.
Four weeks later, my career is about to become more complicated.
Let me preface. I am a 25-year-old who for years has been (at least) interested in or (at most) obsessed with politics and policy. I read the news, I think about the news, I analyze it and talk about it and, during the past year, I have written some news of my own.
Since Capitolwire hired me in November or October, I have followed Pennsylvania government closely, too. Since I started work January 5, I’ve followed it very, very closely.
But I am by no means an expert - I still have a lot (a lot) to learn - and yesterday was a harsh reminder of that fact. After a morning spent working on a profile of House Majority Leader Todd Eachus and a brief afternoon press conference held by Senate Republicans to detail their health-care reform proposal, Eachus stopped by the newsroom to tell the statehouse reporters about the House rules package he is sponsoring.
House rules are pretty damn important. They dictate when the House can be in session; how long the reps must wait after introducing a bill before they can debate, discuss and vote on it; how many people sit on each committee, and so on. Poorly conceived House rules can lead to sketchy governing, with little to no public review of bills and sometimes very little review by legislators. Certain kinds of rules allow powerful legislators to effectively control legislation. A select group will get together, devise a bill, persuade others in their party to support it and push it through with little review or formal opposition.
A well-known example: A few years ago, the legislature here gave itself a pay raise at 3 a.m., with no public scrutiny. That one caught the public’s eye, leading to some high-profile pols being voted out of office, but sometimes these things seem to slide on through. Not quite a democratic process, if you ask me.
I learned most of what I know about rules in the past 30 hours. Yesterday, when Rep. Eachus stopped by with some of his staffers, I knew almost nothing. So when the majority leader started talking about 24-hour consideration on concurrence bills and the divisibility of bills and amendments and effective filibusters during debate as 11 p.m. approaches, I felt a little drowned.
That is one of the hardest parts of being a reporter. You get thrown into situations that you don’t always understand and you are expected to explain them in plain English to people who may have even less of an understanding than you do. You’re also writing for experts - for people who will catch your mistakes without blinking an eye and call you out on them just as fast. Both groups must be satisfied for you to maintain your authority.
So the next two hours were rough. My awesome co-worker Laura Olson and I had a lot to learn and very little time to learn it. Our bosses had gone home for the day to care for their kids. We whined a bit, I admit it.
But somehow, after re-hashing the press conference and getting a briefing on rules from one of our bosses (Pete is a bona fide expert, thank goodness), Laura and I were able to pull together a story. It only had a few errors, and after it was published, one of those aforementioned expert readers pointed out one more. But overall, I think, it worked. Even though at the outset we had no idea what we were doing.
Tomorrow the governor will give his budget address, throwing a whole bunch more confusion (and a big-ass book full of numbers) into my life. Am I ready? Meh. One would hope. As I said, I am no expert. As I said, it will be complicated, and hard.
It’s also so, so worth it. Because as confusing as rules and budgets are, they’d be even more confusing without us reporters doing what we can to translate them into plain English. We perform a very valuable service, or at least we do when at our best.
That, in a nutshell, is why I like my job, even though it’s hard. It’s also why I hope to one day be an expert.
4 Responses
Stay in touch with the conversation, subscribe to the RSS feed for comments on this post.
I feel ya. I once thought I could never be a political reporter based on the fear of the drowning feeling you’re describing.
Then someone made the point to me: I didn’t know about Derry Twp.’s stormwater problems or the governance structure of The Hershey Co. when I started, and a new beat writer for the Phillies doesn’t know about how the right fielder has long been a clubhouse cancer. Unfortunately every single one of us is fucked at the beginning, but smart people and good reporters can figure it out faster than others will. Someone’s gotta do it.
Great post… your work and capitolwire is truly helpful to the rest of us also trying to constantly stay on top of this amazingly complex system we call government. So little of the true way these systems work can be found in any reference book or website, it just has to be lived… Thanks for struggling through the details and relaying it to all of us — its much appreciated!
I’ve been there and done that. It’s the philosophy of throwing someone in the water and seeing if they can swim.
When I worked at the P&J I was expected to be an expert on so many things and it was quite frustrating at times.
Like Dan said “Unfortunately every single one of us is fucked at the beginning, but smart people and good reporters can figure it out faster than others will. Someone’s gotta do it.”
Good luck and great post.
Everyone who has ever started a new job has felt these exact same feelings. No matter what the position, it doesn’t get any easier. Simply put, you summed up very real emotions in a clear and concise way.
What impresses me is that journalists are not only expected to master their own trade of researching and writing, but they have to master the knowledge of whatever it is they are writing about. The more you spend time up on the Hill, the more confident you will become. In no time you’ll be giving speeches as an expert. (just as a friend once explained to me on the way back from Target one time).
And by now you have survived your first day of budget melée!