Story dilemma (Blog 11)

Last Tuesday was probably one of the longest days of my life. It wasn’t that the Chauncey Bailey trial was boring it was all the bureaucratic garbage being spilled in the courtroom. Obviously I didn’t go into the courtroom thinking it was going to be like Law & Order: SVU (one of my favorite shows) in which I would understand everything that is going on. Everything that was discussed in the courtroom such as the evidence and key witness testimonies sounded like Japanese, I couldn’t understand 50 percent of it. Although I jotted down copious amounts of notes, I should have gotten more background information before going to the trial, but to my dismay I had tons of work from other classes that I couldn’t ignore.

Fortunately I had received contact information from Melissa Krum (prosecutor) and Gary Sirbu (Mackey’s lawyer); I was amazed with how helpful they were. After talking to the lawyers and diving into a whole mess of research I was able to connect with what went on in the trial to Chauncey Bailey’s murder and presto story complete. I had no idea how complicated the case was going to be, who would have thought so much crime would come from a small little bakery of all places. The case is so complex if someone were to make a movie out of it, they would have to turn it into a mini-series just to get it right.

I’m not sure how our professor would feel about my article since it was my first time covering a trial, but at least I completed my story on time with the format she asked for. All I can do is hope for the best at this point.

As for my final story it seems that all arrows points at nude people in the Castro. I’ve done a little bit of research on the subject while I was working on my crime story and it seems like too many people have written about nudists in San Francisco. Some of them were positive others were negative, either way I have to go with a different angle. I would like to write a profile piece on one of the nudists I spoke with a couple weeks ago I don’t think anyone has used that angle yet (at least not to my knowledge).

I may consider writing about the Castro’s night life because I heard it can get a little wild after a certain, especially in the bars. But if you guys have any story ideas I could use please feel free to send some my way, I would really appreciate it.