Covering Meetings & Speeches

   Meetings sometimes drag! There's no doubt about it — be sure to drink a lot of water or coffee before covering any meeting. However, public meetings and speeches offer the best opportunity for the reporter to gather news.

   How can you be sure to get the story? First, get the agenda. It indicates what topics will be discussed at the meeting — what seems to be the most newsworthy topic to cover this session?

   Agendas help with both the preview and the meeting articles. It's also especially helpful if you're covering multiple branches of government at the same time (see first legislative story). By having an idea of where on the agenda the meeting currently is, you can go back and forth between meetings and get a broader view of the day's story. Information that you cover today may have direct bearing on a future article, so it's good to keep old articles for background information.

   At the campus level, the Student Government Association's new site provides a lot more information than the old one, but it doesn't seem to have been updated since 2002. You'll have to get an agenda at the meeting. Some campus groups might have Web pages to provide information on times or dates, but you'll have to check when they've been updated. You can get information from Lindsey Kight.

   This week's meeting dates (available in Around Campus):

The U.N.I.T.Y choir rehearses Mondays at 7:30 p.m. in the Music building, Room 133. UNITY is open to all students. For more information, call 460-1743 or e-mail unityclub@uamont.edu.

The Traffic Committee meets the first Thursday of each month.

   You might also cover speeches given by a member of a legislative body, which includes elected positions within your community. Some speakers hand out copies of their speech's text so reporters won't misquote them. Though hand-outs help as a prompt, don't get suckered into relying on it or you might unintentionally frame the issue exactly as the speaker wishes — as well as miss something the speaker actually said.

Cold Feet

   I'd covered the North Little Rock City Council, Water Utility Board, Waste-Water Utility Board, Housing and Urban Development Board, and multiple County agencies before I got the job to cover the Arkansas State Legislature. So I was prepared, right?

   Hardly. With my agenda in hand, three pens in my pocket and copies of bills I found important, I met the senator from my coverage area, then headed to the press box in the Senate chamber. All of a sudden, I started sweating like a prostitute in church. NERVES (butterflies)! I didn't want to mess up on my first day in the capitol.

   Instead of choking, I relied on the old stand-bys that got me through council meetings. Looking at the agenda, I looked for items that would interest my constituency (Republican, pro-business, pro-life, etc.) Though these items didn't necessarily agree with my personal viewpoints, my job required me to tailor my writing for the reader.

News Values Help!
  Proximity told me I needed to cover items affecting Northwest Arkansas. Prominence told me I should follow the senators and representatives from my constituency's area. It just so happened most of those senators and representatives filled high-profile positions since they came from a booming area of the state (Fayetteville). By following the bills they tried to pass in the Legislature, I covered the main issues. In some cases (e.g. partial-birth abortions), conflict demanded that I spend time outside of the legislative halls to finish a story. Though the Legislature worked on multiple issues over the course of a session, not all of them would would interest my readers.

   In any meeting you have to know your audience to know what interests them. You must be prepared for the meeting by writing advance questions taken from a scan of the agenda. After you've attended multiple meetings, you can use information gathered from previous meetings to help write current stories.

If you don't understand something in this Web note, please e-mail Dr. Sitton.