Gale Warning

Seeing Council Through Unjaded Eyes

by Daryl Gale

Most Thursday mornings, I attend the City Council session at 10 a.m., and I have to admit, it’s become a fairly tedious routine. That’s because for many of us who cover Council -- and I suspect for more than a few Council members as well -- the excitement of watching legislation happen has lost its fizzle.

We listen to Chief Clerk Pat Rafferty read the bills and messages at her usual rapid-fire clip, but rarely write anything down because so little of it has any actual news value. We watch as Council members talk distractedly to aides or chat on cell phones while votes are being tallied, and as Council President Anna Verna bangs her gavel for the 20th time to implore the audience to hush. The whole session just seems to look and sound exactly the way it did last week, and the week before that. That's why I was especially pleased to have brought 10 students from the Gen. George G. Meade School in North Philly to City Council with me last week. Their wide-eyed wonder was inspiring and their innocent naiveté on the workings of city government was a kick in the pants for a grizzled old news reporter who's seen it all once too often.

The seventh-graders are working with us here at City Paper on a joint project, the brainchild of Meade principal Frank Murphy and our editor in chief, Howard Altman. The kids are going to report news, arts and features, shoot photos and lay out their own newspaper -- all under the supervision of us so-called professionals who do this for a living. Their newspaper will be a featured section of City Paper within the next couple of months.

"We're pushing it as a school-wide project," Murphy told me Monday. "It's an opportunity for the kids to see beyond themselves, and start seeing themselves as part of the larger world."

As City Paper's political reporter, my function in this project is to show the kids how to write a political story. So I gave them all reporter's notebooks, got them to City Hall last Thursday and told them what to listen for and write down. What I didn't expect was to get a lesson in politics myself.

They were all antsy and fidgeting in their seats when Councilman Darrell Clarke, whose district includes the Meade school, acknowledged their presence in the chamber and asked the kids to stand, which they did to rousing applause. I had to explain to the quizzical boy sitting in front of me that Clarke is his city councilman, a piece of information that was whispered down the line. Sitting behind them, it was interesting to see each kid get the news, then look at Clarke with awe. They'd seen him on television and read his name in the papers, but there he was in the flesh, smiling at them from 15 feet away, and they swelled with pride.

After Council adjourned, Verna came down to where we were sitting for an impromptu press conference, graciously agreeing to answer questions from the pintsized journalists-in-training. Before the session started, I told them that I had spoken to Verna and that she'd be available for questions afterward. They were enthusiastic as I fed them a few sample questions they could ask her, like what the job of Council president is like and how she gets along with the mayor and all the Council members.

They were ready, they said, excitedly nudging each other at the prospect of grilling a politician like a real reporter. But then, the moment came. Verna came down from her lofty perch overlooking Council and came to the back of the room. After introducing herself and asking the kids where they were from and what subjects they were studying, she asked if any of them had any questions.

Their reaction? Dead silence.

Now that the president of City Council was standing right there, their nerves got the best of them and they just sat there silently grinning at her. After giving them a second chance, and getting the same cheese-eating grins, Verna excused herself and went back to work. I was a little disappointed that they didn't ask the questions, until I remembered the first time I interviewed the mayor, or the governor or a bigtime political player.

Your mouth goes dry, your palms sweat and you start getting that tunnel-vision thing. You're desperate to be intelligent and insightful, but there's the unshakable feeling that whatever you ask is going to be a stupid question. After a while, you lose that feeling. Conversations with movers and shakers become routine, and eventually mundane. You forget that these people are given a sacred trust by the voters, and in general, are still respected, even admired.

At least for one day, I got to look at them not with the jaded, cynical eye of a news reporter, but through the eyes of seventh-graders who see them as great leaders. I hope our politicians start to look at themselves with those eyes -- it could make them better public servants. I know it's made me a better news reporter.

Daryl Gale’s weekly radio show, Dialogues, with co-hosts Rotan Lee and Bill Miller, is burning up the airwaves Fridays 7-10 a.m. on WURD (900 AM) in Philadelphia.