Taste of the real thing

So I was involved in my first reporters scrum today.

For our back to school story, I covered the Urban Assembly for Careers in Sports in the South Bronx. I had chosen the school ahead of time and, when I went to do background on the school, the principal told me there would be a Daily News reporter there all day and that Joel Klein would be stopping by around 1 p.m.

Erin Einhorn, one of the Daily News' reporters, was the one covering it. She was nice but I tried to avoid asking too many questions since she did have a job to do.

At 1 p.m., the rest of the crew showed up -- ABC, NBC, Telemundo, WNYC, the Times and the Post. They had been following Klein around the boroughs as he touted his new empowerment schools.

The building where the Urban Assembly school also houses two other schools that I wasn't reporting on, after talking to students all day at the school, one of the chancellor's entourage yelled at me when I tried to cover something other than where they were shepherding the press from classroom to classroom.

I hopped on board and shoved my microphone (I was doing a radio piece) in the scrum as the TV stations questioned Klein. I didn't get a question in, but I think my sound came out all right. Of course much of it was staged, but it was a good experience. And I made friends with the Post education reporter (who went to Newhouse incidentally and praised journalism education), Dave Andreatta. All in all, not a bad day.