A student journalist’s guide to budget day
By Tanner Aulie
Photo by Tanner Aulie. The rotunda at the Legislative Building during budget day.
As journalists, the INK team is entitled to receive embargoed copies of the budget the night before budget day. And on the night before budget day, all through the Journalism School, not a journalist was stirring because they were legally not at liberty to discuss the budget at that time.
Embargoed means that they are legally not allowed to report or discuss it with anyone outside of other journalists until it is officially presented by the finance minister. The fact that this embargo was honoured is proof that our generation is not completely obsessed with sharing every part of our lives through social media.
Reading and understanding the budget proved difficult for many of our team because of the amount of jargon and political language used. But they only had one day to prepare and because it is embargoed, no one is allowed to take a copy outside the Journalism School much less off campus, so everyone muscled through it and the stories started coming together.
The next morning, business reporter Evan Radford and provincial reporter Tatenda Chikukwa were at the Legislative Building early to attend briefings and press conferences related to their respective beats. The remainder of the team remained at the school fleshing out their stories before everyone gathered at the Legislative Building in the afternoon.
The embargo lasts until the second Finance Minister Ken Krawetz introduces it in the legislature which was shortly after 2 p.m. At 2:01 p.m. the whole INK team took a second to take a quick budget day selfie, because we are ‘that generation.’
Rather than going into the chamber where the proceedings were taking place, our team, along with the other media, watched from a television feed in a separate room. In this time we are told to pick out and memorize the people you may want to talk to and when the doors opened we understood why.
When the doors opened, the team was inundated in a flood of neckties and pantsuits that came from the chamber. They then proceeded to comb through the crowd of people and try to identify and locate the minister or the spokesperson that they needed for their story.
For Samanda Brace, INK’s city reporter, this proved to be the hardest part. “I’d keep seeing people in scrums and I’d be like, 'Who are they? Who is this person?' There was so many people and it was so crowded,” she said.
Caitlin Brezinski, INK’s education reporter said she enjoyed the day. “The worst part was waiting but when we actually got into it, it was really good,” she said.
Austin Davis, a Regina Leader-Post reporter and former U of R journalism student, said he was glad to see young student journalists involved in budget day and assured the team that these events get easier. He also offered this advice to the team: “I think it’s important that you treat any time you come to the (Legislative Building) and any story you do as important. Because it is important to someone.”
At the end of the day, the overall feeling from the team is a proud exhaustion. Pride that they participated in something important like budget day and exhaustion that they put a story together in half the time they generally do.
As Taryn Riemer, INK’s agriculture reporter said “I feel like I just ran a marathon.”
