Late nights, coffee, deadlines, and Darth Vader

I'm running on three hours of sleep.

My beat is the Rancho Cordova city council. The city is friendly and young--it's like a lamb in the sunshine, really. Enthusiastic, almost bouncy. Helpful to the extreme. It wears a perfect white shiny coat, and it bounds all over the place.

But the city council members are too enthusiastic. I left that meeting last night at 1:40 a.m. and it still was not done! Their discussions are laboriously off-topic. They get bogged down in details that do not pertain to the city policy before them. Worst of all, they are unused to making decisions as a team! I can't tell you how many times last night two council members talked over each other purposely--for at least fifteen seconds--before having to repeat themselves because no one can hear anything when two mics are battling.

One of the councilmen was in Florida during this time. He had to stay up talking on the phone until 4 a.m. his time, then he had a meeting in three hours. (Anecdotally, he was hooked to a mic, and the whole time was Darth Vader-breathing onto the speakers. No one said anything to him, but everyone laughed about it.)

I sat next to Sac Bee reporter Molly Dugan, who has also been very helpful. She said not to give up on journalism because of this council. "I've covered fifteen other councils, and this one is the worst by far," she told me.

The poor lady had a deadline of 1 a.m. She had to call in to say the deadline wouldn't be made. Worse, she had to teach a class at 8 a.m. She was drinking coffee.

The council's late-night deliberations not only are rude and inconsiderate, they do NOT seem conductive to local democracy. The people are not all able to participate in such a long-winded discussion. Half the commenters left before they were able to speak on the issue they came to speak about!

As a result, my story smells worse than a field of cows. I couldn't get any reaction to their final decision... I don't fully understand what that decision means--and to be fair, they don't either. They left their decision vague on purpose! I did not even stay to see the complete final decision. And why should I have? I kid you not when I say they spent ten minutes debating whether or not to put the word "and" into their policy. I came home at 2 a.m., spent an hour on the story, only quoted people whose names I knew how to spell, got up three hours later and rushed to class. I'm in class now, typing this - if I didn't have class, I'd be on the phone getting reactions to the events of last night.

So there you have it. I feel more than a little like I've set myself up to fail this time around. I'm really hoping that all future deadlines are on Thursday, not Tuesday! And when it comes time for me to really be hired at a paper... I won't schedule anything for the morning after a meeting. I'll use stims and get that story right the first time. Until I'm paid to lose sleep, I'll leave the meetings early and just read about it in the Bee!