Angered. Just a little...
Last night were the municipal elections throughout the province of Ontario. We all (well an amazing 41 per cent of Torontonians) went to the polls to vote for the councillor who'd be representing our Ward.For school we were covering the election throughout the Greater Toronto Area. Since I'm in the online cycle at the moment, I could cover anywhere in the city I wanted. I chose my own Ward 42, The fightin' 42nd! *ahem*.
So yes. I spoke over the phone with 3 of the candidates and their representitives and then I went to the winner Dr. Raymond Cho's victory speech when he was clearly going to win. I got there at about 8:15pm and he showed up right on time at 8:30pm. I must say I was somewhat amused and annoyed at the reception he received. It seemed more fit to that of a boxer winning the championship belt than to a politician retaining his seat on city council.
Anyway, I ended up doing a couple quick interviews with him. I say quick because he was quite willing to brush myself and another guy, who works for a different part of my college's community paper, off. He was very eager to speak with the Korean media there to cover the victory.
In his speech and to me he noted that the 2nd place finisher in the race didn't even bother to show up to the all-candidates debates held in the ward during the campaign. Clearly this was the story so I tried to push him a little bit into giving me more... like saying the guy's name as opposed to referring to him as the guy who won 2nd place, or the Tamil.
On that race note, he mentioned the reason why the guy received as many votes because he was getting them based on his culture/race.
So I left after getting his quotes and proceded to call the 2nd place guy as it was getting somewhat late and I thought they'd be gone from their headquarters since they'd lost. The guy didn't answer his phone at all. Not to worry, it'd work perfectly with my angle of him never being there.
So I called the third place guy. I'd spoken with him earlier in the night and I really thought he'd do better than that, just because he spoke with me mostly (haha). Anyway, he even mentioned the fact that the other opponent never showed without my coaxing. There's my story, done and done.
I write it and send it in to my editor/teacher. He sends it back to me and tells me to make it straight facts of who won, how many votes, etc. Now all my college career we've been taught to find the story and not just write what's given us. I did that. I had to rewrite it. It had no life, no nothing, but that's what they wanted.
I have no problem with doing that, the real online people do that. In fact, it took me a while to learn not to do that, but after I put the effort into making a story work and have it shit on when I did nothing wrong, is fucked up.
Peace.
posted by Sean @ 11:32 PM
Comments: 6
