Notes on covering breaking news

Anytime breaking news comes my first reaction is, “Can I just half ass this? It’s so inconvenient for me.”

Reporters who deliver good breaking news coverage are always ready to stop everything they’re doing and immerse themselves in what’s going on with a burning building, a nearby gunshot, or whatever.

Today I made the mistake of not asking good questions. Maybe I was lazy? Either way, I’ll lay them down here and explain my rationale behind them.

Asking the neighboring store owner of a burnt down business if he’s concerned that his neighbors are overloading their power strips.

The obvious question I failed to ask tonight is what the owners first reaction was to see his building engulfed in flames.

DOH!!!

Too much good stuff

NYTimes is chock full of good story ideas. As an aspiring fiction political writer I like to steal the ideas that actually happen in real life and create fictional plot lines around them–producing a realistic-style fiction. Certain even produce excellent ideas for fiction.

Ideas like legalizing marriage in Iowa.
Ideas like Obama’s Normandy beach walk on the 66th anniversary of D-Day
Ideas like the G-20 summit meeting not producing any benefits for the sick and poor in Africa while shelling out trillions in bailout money to rich corporateers.

GPSS president, representative Savage say “student voices important” in Olympia

RIght now Olympia is a constant, high-intensity marathon of ideas exchanged, negotiations made, and budgets proposed. The yet-to-be-determined final budget yields itself to many influences, and for that reason GPSS president Wallace Bungerstrom and representative Peter Savage say now is a good time to rally student voices.

“We need to get more students active with lobbying efforts,” Bungerstrom said. “It was because of UW student lobby efforts that tuition was not increased beyond the 7 percent cap while the budget was in the Higher Education Committee. My past efforts to rally student voices included email blasts to UW students.”

The budget is currently in the Ways and Means Committee, and once again it is necessary for students to voice their concerns to their representatives if they don’t want tuition to extend beyond the 7 percent tuition cap currently in place.

“This is an important time for students to voice their concerns. Without the continued support of our students efforts thus far would be in vain. This is a marathon, and its important all the players make it to the finish line,” Bungerstrom said.

Like everything considered in the budget, lawmakers share the difficult task of balancing the needs of those they represent with the unrelenting constraints of the struggling economy and limited budget.

“These state funding cuts are historically deep. There are unprecedentedly large cuts [for the upcoming biennium] they and will have incredibly detrimental impact beyond students and staff. Don’t lose sight of the enormity of these budget reductions,” said Director of State Relations for UW Beatnick Budlington.

He and others in the administration are lobbying to increase tuition beyond the 7 percent cap to compensate for the deep cuts that will affect the UW.

“These cuts are necessary. If all other resources have been exhausted, that leaves only one option available, cut tuition,” Budlington said.

Student lobbyists have succeeded in keeping the 7 percent tuition cap a constant while it was in the Higher Education Committee, but now that it’s moved to the next phase other for further suggestions and proposals.

The Senate, which released its budget on Monday, kept the tuition cap unchanged. However the house, which released its budget on Tuesday, proposed a tuition cap increase from 7 to 10 percent.

“I have deep concerns about anything above [the 7 percent cap],” Representative Savage said. “I feel students should voice their concerns.

There can be more of a student voice in Olympia, Savage said. He noticed a meeting where representatives from all Washington four-year institutions came to lobby for a 14 percent tuition increase, while only one student representative came to lobby to keep the 7 percent in place.

Bungerstrom hopes to change that.

Bungerstrom acknowledged that the state of the economy leaves very few alternatives for cuts, but also said the administration should focus on other ways to mitigate budget cuts rather than raising tuition.

“I am sending out another email blast tonight that will contain the state of the budget at this point, as well as the contact information for all of our representatives. We’ve had a strong lobby force so far, and with more students voicing their concerns we will have a stronger influence in Olympia.”

Coming soon…

Rewrite of a story I just published will go here. I will create quotes that should be in there, and pull devices from NYTimes writers to apply to my own journalism.

An exigence on my day, precocious, semblance

Basically, this is the blog where I test run thoughts and attempt to contexualize big words. Did I just contextualize this blog? Perhaps I should move on before giving myself an aneurism.

My day was abysmal, but it’s not obvious. The running around, the strenuous face, the stress-induced sweat: all these hallmarks were absent.

My precocious day began with a 6AM text message warning me I have 2 days to return my books.

I glanced around the room following the return of the students’ test scores, and saw each students’ semblance turned askance.

Precocious – exceptionally early in development
Semblance – outward and often specious appearance of show; countenance

Sex and Gender: Complications with the Ooloi

The ooloi in Octavia E. Butler’s _Lilith’s Brood_ are a strange new sex to humanity, shifting the binary male/female paradigm toward a trifecta. The ooloi have neither the female or male gonads. Instead, they have an alien “sensory arm” that acts as its sexual organ, but regardless of the absence of any male or female gonads the ooloi possess characteristics we often associate with femininity and masculinity. Specifically through the ooloi Nikanj, readers are presented with a situation which is problematic and disruptive of our idea of and relationship between sex, gender, and sexuality.

We know that Nikanj’s biological sex is the alien ooloi. It seems that such a strange sex to humanity would be accompanied by a strange set of behaviors. Instead, Nikanj acts within the framework of the male gender. This is strange to most of us, because we assume that only those that have a penis and testicles should display male gender attributes, such as a dominant, head of the household presence. With that said, Nikanj disrupts our standard thinking and challenges our assumptions that a biological sex automatically leads to a particular socio-cultural gender. Instead of thinking that gender is a dependant factor on biological sex, we are forced to think of each factor independent of one another.

Further complicating our notion of sex and gender is the strange portrayal of sexuality in the novel. We know that many of the male characters show homophobia towards Nikanj. After Joseph’s first sexual experience with it, he says “I don’t want him here again” (170). Paul Titus also refers to Nikanj as a “he” (89). The behavior the Human males display toward Nikanj begs the question: what is there to be homophobic toward? As stated before, Nikanj doesn’t possess a penis or testicles to be considered biologically male. Instead, characters like Joseph are acting toward a set of behaviors that socio-culturally gender Nikanj as being male. He thinks logically, is commanding, and sits at the head of the family. Perhaps sexuality isn’t as dependent on biological sex as it is on perceived gender. For instance, we typically think of a heterosexual relationship as a relationship between a biological man and women; however, we’re challenged here to think about sexuality within the framework of socio-cultural gender. As shown by Nikanj, a person could be one biological sex, but be perceived social-culturally as a different gender. Nikanj carries a masculine identity, which carries importance, and a getting-used-to period, when Joseph mates with it.

Grouping particular gendered characteristics as being associated exclusively with a particular biological sex is definitely a socio-cultural construct. Octavia E. Butler encourages readers to reexamine our understandings of what it means to be “male” or “female” that allows us to think beyond societal norms, that maleness doesn’t have to be tied to a penis or testicles, but can materialize in any number of ways. As a result, reductive, alienating stereotypes can be challenged, reexamined, and disassembled, resulting in a society that is more accepting of people’s differences and of relationships that don’t align with societal norms, and can create healthy living spaces in which everyone can interact and live in.

Lashing Out Against Communities

In Octavia E. Butler’s _Amnesty_, an alien race called “Communities” inhabits Earth in “bubbles” in places like deserts, which are not useful to humans. The humans resent the aliens because they are different and have ruined America’s, and other economies, however Noah, the protagonist, decides that instead of fighting the Communities, she saw the usefulness of working with them, saying “Where else would I be but here at a bubble, trying to help the two species understand and accept one another…” (17). Noah challenges readers to examine ourselves and our intolerant nature, our resentment toward what we don’t understand, and by consciously controlling this we can find usefulness, and even pleasure in the things we naturally detest.

Humans are typically competitive, and enjoy feeling superior over one another. We have a habit of holding grudges, resentment, bias, racism, and prejudice against a certain individual or group of people whom are strange, unknown, and whose way of life is foreign to us. However as Noah experiences, these resentments and attitudes create the conditions for suffering. Indeed, the goal for people on Earth is the survival, progress, and understanding of humanity, where more people are happy and get along with one another. Butler shows that these goals are difficult to achieve, as human nature is designed to test our will for understanding differences in people on the planet. When Noah was released from the Communities, she’s immediately taken prisoner by a group of bounty hunters who then sell her to the government, who perform tests on her and knowingly cause her suffering, pain, and suicidal actions. Case in point, intolerance perpetuates human suffering.

Butler challenges these attitudes through the character Noah, who instead of fighting against the Communities, decides to join the communities seeing the greater benefit for her and the human race. She learns how to communicate with them, and serves as a translator between the aliens and humans. Not only does she see the benefit for her and humanity in this, but it’s an act of toleration—accepting the facts of life, instead of what other humans are doing: fighting and resisting an unknown, strange, and foreign force.

Noah teaches readers that one doesn’t have to like the people they work for, for a symbiotic relationship to exist. While the experience with the Communities was disturbing for Noah, she decided to pursue work with them anyways. In one part of the story Noah mentions that she’s been able to put “half a dozen nieces and nephews through college” among other benefits with the species (18). There is a clear working relationship between her and the alien species. On the other hand, the humans she was “calming” were prone to protest against the species, which led to an animosity where they wanted to go to war with the aliens rather than try to work for them. This lesson is useful to readers because so often we think that because we don’t like something we can’t take value from it; however, Noah proves that not only is a symbiotic relationship possible with a strange and foreign people, but it is in fact necessary to tolerate different kinds of people to get on in life.

Butler argues that humans have a tendency to resist and fight the people whose way of life we find strange, disturbing, and potentially hostile. However this tendency need not keep us from finding usefulness in symbiotic relationships. She argues that while we may not all get along together, we can find a level of tolerance with each other that will help both parties get along and benefit from one another.