TOO MANY REPORTERS SPOIL THE NEWS.
The convention is packed with reporters, as you might imagine. This is a bad thing. You often hear press types complain about cutbacks and "doing more with less," but there are times when the news media would literally do a better job if there were fewer of them, and they had fewer pages and fewer hours to fill and a smaller campaign travel budget. Since there were thousands of them who needed to justify their Denver junket today, they all hyped up a couple dozen disgruntled Hillary supporters (meanwhile, the platform was adopted without a hitch). Four cameras trained on the stage would have been cheaper, and more informative and reflective of the actual events of the convention, than all the assembled reporters combined. And with the savings, they could have hired 200 news foreign correspondents. As it is, the concentration of journalists ended up distorting the news and giving viewers a wildly hyped understanding of the scene around the convention. Making them stay home and watch it on TV would've been better for everyone.
Update: I should probably add that I think the coverage will change tomorrow. Today was a weird interim period between when the reporters came out and the convention began. They had nothing to talk about. Tomorrow they'll have convention stuff to talk about, and they'll eventually have Clinton's speech, which may create a "reconciliation" narrative around the convention. A lot of folks are freaking out about the focus of the coverage so far, but I wouldn't trip yet. Tonight and early tomorrow, the stories will be about Kennedy and, more so, Michelle Obama.
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COMMENTS (7)
But they don't have corporate sponsored parties for journalists to go to in Romania.
Posted by: Brien | August 25, 2008 10:56 PM
So you gonna be staying home next time, Ezra?
Posted by: Chris O. | August 25, 2008 10:58 PM
Easy solution: watch C-SPAN.
Posted by: pedestrian | August 25, 2008 11:30 PM
A little off topic, but the Dem convention video feed is off limits to Linux users.
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/08/25/229210&from=rss
To add insult, the contact us link bounces.
Posted by: Fr33d0m | August 25, 2008 11:34 PM
Yep, C-SPAN is the answer. Truly, seeing the convention as it happens is the next best thing to being there.
(And the third best would be to find some way to get the TV fools to at least occasionally STFU. But that's only a dream.)
Posted by: K | August 26, 2008 9:16 AM
This post is very convincing. It made me waste minutes reflecting on how reporters waste time hanging out and group thinking (I know more group drinking). Sortof time wasting squared.
I did think that reporters could do useful reporting in Denver almost as much as they could in Beijing.
Then I scrolled down and read "uninvited." You achieved something useful in Denver.
Posted by: Robert Waldmann | August 26, 2008 10:06 AM
Even baby Kos whined that they were taking too much B-Roll of bloggers.
For shame!
Posted by: christian | August 26, 2008 2:10 PM