"You've got to get up every morning with determination if you're going to go to bed with satisfaction"

This quote by George Horace Lorimer makes me think about whether or not I did wake up with determination to do something every day, and I think that I do. Without this determination, I don't think I would have gone through with my fieldwork placement change, but rather I would probably have given up. However, I am determined and I do wake up every day wanting to do my best at whatever I am doing and I normally go to bed satisfied with my day. Granted, I occaisionally have disappointments in a day, (everyone probably does), but I would say the majority of days I am very satisfied with my day. Sunday seemed like a bad day to me and as though I was missing out on a lot, but later in the evening when I was standing on the convention floor I realized that I wasn't missing all my opportunities, but rather trading some opportunites for other, different opportunities. Today and last night have been going very well as far as my fieldwork placement goes with multiple opportunites to meet and/or see important people such as John Voight, Wolf Blitzer, John Roberts (the CNN guy), Karl Rove, and Sway (MTV News). My new language for the day would probably be the phrase "open satellite window." I saw this phrase in a brochure asking for all media organizations to come to a meeting tomorrow about getting the New Tang Dynasty Television (NTDTV) back on the air in China after being shut off by their contractor, Eutelsat Communications, for political reasons. I'm not entirely sure of the meaning of the phrase, but from the context of the paragraph it seems to me that it would mean there is a specific satellite channel that NTDTV uses for transmitting it's show, the specific channel that is shut off and not in use by anyone else.

I also got into the convention hall tonight in the CQ press box, an experience that I will never forget. I was in the arena when Former President George H.W. Bush walked into the arena and I was stunned. However, I also felt bad for the speaker who had just arrived to the podium because before she could get started on her speech, the cameras flooded to Bush and delayed her speech for at least two minutes. Although only for half an hour, my time inside the arena was breathtaking knowing that I was at the heart of history.

The rest of my day was mostly uneventful, though not boring. I am grateful that the Gustav coverage is over and the RNC can get back to normal, but I am also very happy that the RNC is continuing with it's campaign for donations with phone numbers on the big screen and on TV. This shows care, but also allows for convention business to occur.

I also was able to interview Ken Sands, a reporter for the CQ. He was involved in media starting out as a kid and knew from the time he was in eighth grade that he wanted to go into journalism. He was the editor for both is high school and college newspapers. He went to college at the University of Oregon and graduated in 1981 with a Journalism degree and built a reputation as an innovator in the media. About one and a half years ago, Ken was contacted by the CQ for a job shortly after Mike Reilly was hired as Editor. Ken's reputation as an innovative journalist paid dividends because the reputation was what made Ken stand out from the crowd and be hired. Something that attracted Ken to the CQ was that the majority of it's revenue came from web based news, instead of the traditional print mediums. This allows the CQ to add and expand instead of dwindling and barely holding on like many news organizations. Although Ken never covered any other conventions, he did cover Reagan's campaign against Carter in 1980 as college editor of his paper and interviewed many of members of both Reagan's and Carter's staff. As far as politics go, Ken would like to see a third party enter into the fray as a serious competitor for seats and the Presidency. When Jesse Ventura was elected as a third party candidate for the Governor of Minnesota, Ken thought it might be a sign of progress, but he recognizes our political system moves so slowly that the true progress might not be in the forseeable future. As far as the conventions go, Ken thought the Democratic convention, although history making, was too predictable, and therefor boring from a reporter's point of view. As for the RNC, it has been very amusing due to it's unpredictably and change from day to day.

I also got a photo credit this week for a picture I took of John Voight. This is the URL:

http://blogs.cqpolitics.com/being_there/2008/09/celebrity-sightings-in-st-paul.html 

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