Inside the DNC with Jerry Brady

After the Convention Has Emptied

By Jerry Brady, 8-27-08

There are four times more members of the press at this convention than delegates, over 15,000.  This counts only those with credentials, not the hundreds of hometown bloggers like me.

Outside the convention hall, five large tents are devoted entirely to the press, including The Big Tent for bloggers.  My cousin Tim Wall, a cameraman for CNN, works out of a multi-storied building nearby complete with a patio which serves free ice cream.  Google offers free smoothies and massages.

If you’re on the third level of the Pepsi Center, you can clearly see into the sky boxes that serve as studios for the major networks.  There’s Bill O’Reilly of Fox News clearly visible over there, the PBS crew nearby, CNN below us and so on.

MSNBC, however, is a couple miles away, with Chris Mathews and Keith Olberman perched in a studio on stilts overlooking the train station—where whistles drowned them out last night. 

Lordie, Lordie, did those boys ever like Hillary’s speech last night!  We seem to have in MSNBC a network which has found its voice being the opposite of Fox News.  It’s like the days when newspapers represented political parties baldly and without apology.  Not a great turn of events in my books, but at least Democrats have one more to their liking. 

Television camera have the dominant position on the floor, of course.  To their left as one faces the stage are rows upon rows of print journalists ranking high enough to warrant space in the hall.

Long after delegates had left the hall last night, we passed by them concentrated on identical laptops, spinning stories like industrial works at their looms.  Nearby, a photographer from the Asian sub-continent in a dramatic red turban still found something to shoot. 

The media about the media is itself a big story. 

On a small stage, surrounded by its crew, sat the CNN front line talkers:  Wolf Blitzer, James Carvell, Cameron Brown and the guy who so brilliantly works the electoral map on a touchscreeen.
I have seldom seen a group so bored, spent and just plain exhausted.  They were waiting to turn on the energy but, until then, were hibernating in plain view, conserving energy like the laptops when not in use.
Particularly Carvell.  At a moment’s notice he would be ready to spew out in a single sentence seven reasons the Bush Administration has ruined America but in the meantime he looked like a reptile at rest.

Not so Katie Couric.  Lightly defended and perched on a director’s chair she looked pert, fresh and at ease.

Leaving the hall we ran across Paul Begala.  “Take the rest of the night off, Paul,” we said.  That raised a smile.  He was off camera, a regular guy.

Cousin Tim travels with Candy Crowley or is embedded in the Obama campaign on the road.  He was still at work at 10 and will start again at 6. a.m In between he’ll try to get a little rest at a Motel 6 18 miles away. 

Someone who works in support of this horde told me last night on the bus the media was unhappy with Obama switching his acceptance speech to Invesco Field.  That meant much of this apparatus has to be broken down and reassembled a mile away for a single speech at additional cost.

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