Making News: Alum Builds Washington News Bureau
C.D. “Budd” Ruffin,the District 2 commissioner from rural Choctaw County, Ala., is a big guy—defensive-lineman big—and he sweats a bit as he stands in the grand marble rotunda of the Russell Senate Office Building in his sport coat and scally cap. Ruffin came to Capitol Hill to lobby Alabama’s congressional delegation to fund workforce development, infrastructure, and Narcan kits for police and emergency workers fighting the opioid epidemic. Veteran D.C. broadcast journalist Jacqueline Policastro turns on her camera and helps Ruffin adjust the microphone clipped to his lapel.
“We want to make sure the opioid epidemic does not strangle our small communities, and our first responders should be equipped with anything that will help them do their job better,” Ruffin tells Policastro (COM’06). Ruffin’s lobbying efforts might easily go unnoticed by people back home. CNN and the New York Times aren’t interested, and local media in Alabama no longer have the resources to report from Washington, if they ever did. But a clip—of Ruffin talking about road funding, no less—makes the evening news on WTOK-TV in Meridian, Miss., a station watched by many of Ruffin’s constituents just across the state line.
Author, Joel Brown can be reached at jbnbpt@bu.edu.