Two reporting realizations

I don't think I've worked as hard on any other story for this journalism class as much as I am on this, my final story. Which makes sense, seeing as this story is 10 percent of my grade. The story is our last hurrah, a 20-paragraph, in-depth look at an issue on our beat. I'm back to the taxes again, and as much as I hate to admit it, it is kind of rewarding when I look at the other articles I've done on this issue how much I really have learned. The sad thing is that while understanding this issue makes me so proud, in real life, most people who see articles like these skip right over them, unless they're the ones directly affected, in which case more than half of what I include in the story they already know. But there are two other specific realizations I had while working on this story today that I'd like to share:

1) This whole semester, I've been approaching the whole calling sources thing with the "I need good quotes from you" mindset, when in actuality, I should not be so focused on transcribing the conversation, but rather, "you have valuable information to teach me." Maybe that's why I started out as a broadcast major - it seems that all I'm after is a sound bite. This realization follows with the whole, I need to ask better, more focused questions, rather than the softball "So what's your reaction to the council's resolution?"

2) It's very difficult, especially with an issue as controversial and convoluted as this tax issue, to separate fact from interpretation. This whole day, I've been researching what the lawyers told me yesterday about what's right and wrong, and when I called the councilmember's office to check something, his chief of staff told me, "Well, that is that attorney's assertion of the Master Plan. Another attorney will have a different opinion." And since no court has ruled on which interpretation is the "correct" on in terms of the law, I'll just have to settle with dealing with an issue to which there is "no absolute truth" as she put it.

*deep breath* Alright, time to dive back in so I can have a somewhat decent product to show Professor tomorrow and ask him whether I've gotten lost in the bureaucratic muck yet again.