Great Debate

It sounds like I had the same problem as a lot of other people in class, I just couldn't find a good story. I started off by searching Newsbank for Thursday's date, then I searched the actual word Thursday and still got nothing that was good. I tried syracuse.com next, I searched the events calendar with the same two things. After Professor Nicholson nixed my first pathetic story idea I went back to syracuse.com and did a general search for Thursday. That's where I found a three sentence story on a County Executive debate that was being held Thursday night by the Greater Syracuse Association of Realtors. Dale Sweetland had just conceded the primary and no one was really sure if he was going to continue to run or not, but he would have decided by the debate. I realized that this was as good of a story as I was going to get. I got on the Greater Syracuse Association of Realtors website, got their phone number, and called them up. Luckily the P.R. guy, Kalin Moon, was really nice and agreed to meet with me even though things were kind of crazy at the office. I later realized this is because he thought it would go on air, but he didn't seemed to mind too much when I told him it wasn't. When I got to their office in Liverpool he decided that the best person to answer my questions was the Chairman of the Legislative Committee at the Association. Luckily he was free and they set a conference call for me. Jeff Pinard had some really good answers for me about both the primary and why the Association was hosting the debate, so that gave me another angle option. Once I finished the story Kalin had me email him the story so they could have it on file and he seemed pretty happy with it.