Race Article/Obama Speech

At first I thought oh no--this topic is so vague, there was really anywhere you could take it if you wanted to. My problem was, I didn't know where I wanted to take it. I sort of knew I wanted to stick with the idea of race and the speech because Poughkeepsie is a very diverse--but also divided place. When I did my interviews I got varied responses. Most people were supportive of Obama's speech and glad he brought up the issue of race. The variations in opinions came about his media portrayal and the issue of race itself. Most people said that it should not matter, but that unfortunately, it still does. It was nice to find that no one was particularly racist or voting based upon race (but then again they could have been lying to a silly little journalist like myself). It was one of my better interviewing experiences, at least with on the street ones. People were very friendly and seemed eager to answer questions. It was also a relatively easy topic because its virtually impossible not to hear about the campaign one way or another. Even thought the responses were somewhat repetitive, I managed to get enough quotes to formulate some type of angle and article...thank god. haha.