Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Understanding Government Jargon

The assignment to write a story about on a meeting sounded simple enough. Although I found it hard to find a meeting in my neighborhood. Bummer. Then I found a meeting that I could do for the assignment.

The Board of Supervisor's Budget and Finance meeting was last Wednesday and I would be covering it with a few of my class mates. Doesn't this meeting sound like fun? Yeah right, maybe if you lived for political jargon and feeling completely lost when the item numbers come up. Yep that was my situation but as a journalist there are things that you will have to report on and you'll have to do your best to get the interviews and understand what reserve funds and add-backs are.

Overall the meeting was only an hour, thank goodness. Luckily I had a partner in crime when it came to writing this story; his name is Nick Moone. Nick knew ever item number, all the jargon and what add-ons meant. This blew my mind. He tried to walk me through everything and although still confused we managed to do everything we could to get this story out.

With a few corrections from Professor Daley we realized the legal jargon was confusing the reader. We set up a game plan in class and will begin to rewrite the paper on Thursday. Yay for rewrites and Nick's background in student government. Lets see how round two will go when we write this paper.

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