Finding CNY ACLU vs. Solvay

So, what do you do when the story you wanted to cover just isn't coming through? Well, for starters, you furiously scan every detail of every story in the newspaper and hope that something gives you an idea or peaks your curiosity. It was just my luck to have one of those days, on my birthday no less. Apparently, terrorists were trying dry runs at U.S. airports, and I wanted to find out what the Syracuse airport was doing about. Well, it might have been easier to talk to the President of the United States about the weather than get someone to talk to me about security at the Syracuse airport. So, in an effort to not ruin my birthday by failing that day's assignment, I scanned as much of the newspaper as I could before I finally found something interesting. Solvay was getting a curfew, but I already knew that. What peaked my curiosity was the little blurb at the end of the story about the director of the local ACLU chapter saying the curfew is unconstitutional. Plus, the newspaper had done a poor job of explaining why the ACLU's side. To top it all off, one of the reporters in my group had gone to the meeting and was writing his story on the curfew. I thought it would be wonderful to explore this aspect of the story and save my own butt in the process. So, I called up the executive director Barrie Gewanter and interviewed her over the phone. She was extraordinarily helpful and treated me like a reporter who was actually going to air the story. I got a lot of good soundbites, wrote my story, and then spent the rest of the time enjoying the fact that our newscast was coming together very well. It was a stressful but still exciting birthday.