The Republican National Convention starts next week in St. Paul. As a political junkie, I’m excited. I’ve cleared most of my client calendar to focus on being a journalist for a week. To that end, I took a scouting trip to St. Paul yesterday to check out the area…and had some pleasant surprises.
I want to be comfortable with all my walking trails and important connections. A friend is allowing me to stay in her downtown apartment, so I can have easy access to the Convention space. We drove the different paths I will walk next week. Of course no scouting trip is done until you end up at a rooftop establishment for a bit of food and perhaps a lively drink. What a lunch time it was. I ended up making friends with some key inside people during this lunch hour. To protect them, I won’t mention names or cocktail choices.
The important lesson here is the affirmation of my journalistic insight. There are stories everywhere. There are sources everywhere, plus all the places in between. And there’s nothing like hitting the streets before a big event to make sure you’ve got some bases covered. I found some good point people for my work next week and some ideas for stories I might not have known about had I not walked in store fronts and talked with people. That’s a lesson I hope my students take in as a couple of them intern for CBS during the Convention and my clients remember as they pitch their stories to the media.
I’ll be talking with you from the airwaves and look forward to sharing the things I uncover during my live reports. Feel free to listen to the WCCO Radio Team on 830 AM in the Twin Cities and surrounding states or online at wccoradio.com.
