In this episode we visit with two of Oklahoma's intrepid journalists, Grant Hermes (News9) and Sean Murphy (Associated Press) to get an inside look into what it's like to cover the State Capitol and politics in general in today's political climate.

NOTE: As you’ll hear at the beginning of the episode, we had an issue with the initial audio export and thus had to cut out the first five minutes of the original recording. So, we jump in near the beginning of our discussion of the second news article listed below.

News Round-up

• New Election Board service allows voters to change registration information online (State Election Board)

• GOP nominee for Oklahoma Senate flipped between parties during campaign (NewsOK)

• Investigator at Oklahoma Health Department disciplined for affair with supervisor who emailed fake threats to herself (NewsOK)

• Editorial: Health Department should honor open records requests (NonDoc)

• “Overkill,” Town Board guts draft ordinance on Medical Marijuana (Luther Register)

• Democrats Don’t Care About Policy Compromise Anymore — Just Like Republicans (FiveThirtyEight)

• Live From the Battleground Districts: Polls of the Key Races for House Control (NY Times The Upshot)

Take-Aways

For all of us who have jobs and cannot be at the Capitol all day, every day, the journalists that comprise the Capitol press corp are our eyes and ears inside the building. However, they are merely observers of the process, not active participants. Because of that, they have a unique insight and perspective into what goes on there, and we thought it would be interesting to hear from them directly.

Journalists have come under fire during the last couple years, largely without warrant. Both Grant and Sean do a great job explaining how the see their role in politics today and the process that goes into investigating, researching, vetting, and writing the news. These are not cable news talking heads - these are local people reporting on local things, working their tails off to ensure that they get it right. They also share the most challenging aspects of their jobs as well as their favorite Oklahoma political stories from the past couple of years.

We included “Vol. 1” in the title because we will be doing additional interviews with other reporters at the State Capitol for future episodes down the line. Stay tuned!