I joined another of the Texas TV station reporters from my newsroom to do another interview with Rep. Neugebauer this morning. When we need a meeting with him, we contact his Press Secretary, Beth. She is so nice and down to earth. It’s fairly easy to get an interview with our Congressmen as long as we schedule it in advance. The other Texas reporter and I usually go together and ask both of our questions at once to make it more convenient for the Congressman and to help each other out with videotaping.
We arrived early and set up our equipment and started our interview a few minutes early. Afterward, we stayed and talked for a bit about some of the “stuffed” objects in his office.
There’s a stuffed water buffalo head hanging on his wall and a zebra rug on the floor. I asked Congressman Neugebauer if both were real. He said he shot them on a hunting expedition that he and his family went on in Africa and it was a really fun experience. The Congressman told us that the people who take you out onto the hunting expedition are able to tell the older members of the heard, so when you shoot to kill, you take down a member of the heard who was already very old. Apparently they can tell the older animals just by looking at them from a distance, by the different marks on their bodies and identifiable scars. I thought that was neat because it wouldn’t be kind to take a young animal's life.
We talked to Rep. Neugebauer off the record for about 20 minutes and it was nice to see how down to earth he really is and how easy he is to talk to. Whenever you interview someone in front of the camera, you often don't get a sense of who they “really” are as a person. But in having the chance to just chat about non-news subjects was great and I really appreciated how openly he talked with us.
No comments:
Post a Comment