WJMC

So for the first time in the almost week I’ve been here, I was actually glad to have started at the crack of dawn.  At approximately 5:15 in the evening tonight, a small “gunfight” took place very near the Capitol. At  approximately 3:45 that same evening, we were loading our busses to return home from a long day of touring, you guessed it, the Capitol.

When breaking news “breaks”, people tend to not know very much about it in the first hour of its life. Reporters are trying to gather as much information as they can as fast as they can, and we the people are trying to comprehend it as fast as we can. The dominating question being passed around in the dining hall tonight was “Oh my God, did you hear what happened? There was a shooting at the Capitol!” This caused quite a stir. All of a sudden parents were calling, everyone was on their mobiles checking the news, and perhaps the most significant,  no one was much interested in the cafeteria food anymore. Go figure. As the night wore on however, we were informed of the facts. You know, the actual facts. You can read the short editorial here:  http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,532880,00.html

But our day was a relatively normal one; searing heat waves, blistered ankles, falling asleep during the lectures, making fun of a certain leader’s innapropriate dress, and you know, the occassional shooting. The usual. The big excitement came from the meeting with NBC’s Chief White House Correspondent Chuck Todd, who just returned from the president’s paparazzi entourage.

Not only will we get to sleep in an hour extra tomorrow morning, but we also have just been told that will will have the opportunity to conduct a real press conference with, get this, the Deputy White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest. And we’re soo important, he’s coming to us.

I imagine there will be some much more interesting news tomorrow. Because, I’ll be honest with you, today was boring.

So today I was presented with one of the most incredible experiences of my life; being recruited to ask the legendary Mark Potts a question during one of our evening sessions.

For each speaker, three students are selected to start the question portion of the lecture. This afternoon, I begged Fate, God, Allah, and Buddha to let one of those three people be me.  “Recovering Journalist” is one of my favorite blogs so this was kind of a big deal for me…

For those of you not fortunate enough to know of Mr. Mark Potts, he is a very prominent journalist who began working for the Washington Post about 15 years ago. He also contributed to the Chicago Tribune for some time, and was a co-creator of Backfence.com . He now runs his own blog site called Recoveringjournalist.com. I highly recommend it for a humorous, witty, and insightful look into our government and media.

So I got to ask my question (will post @ bottom–kind of long) and got to hear his answer. Anyway, me being the ever star-struck foolish girl that I am, just had to get Mr. Potts to sign my notebook.

I will be having that page framed and mounted in my room.

My question to Mark Potts–

I one of your blogs, “A Crossed-Up Acrostic Fan”, you adressed the fact that the public isn’t very interested in what most journalists would consider newsworthy, but instead in celebrity scandals and “changes in their t.v. schedules”. With your extensive knowledge and background, how would you propose we as the future reporters of the world either help turn Americans away from this trend and give them information they need, or do we just appease the masses and give them what they want?

So when everyone says that once you get to college there ceases to be any time for the silly little things like eating, sleeping, or just generally fraternizing. Well, I’m not even enrolled yet, and I know from first hand experience already that they aren’t lying! It’s our third day here and my feet are swollen to the size of small watermelons, my mind has taken to snorting coke to keep up with the schedules, and I’m pretty sure I’ve developed a fairly fluent Michigan accent.

All things considered, I’m still ecstatic to be here and I am loving every minute of it.