Electric Josh

Campain coverage coverage:

I was at Scranton-Wilkes-Barre Airport, in northeast Pennsylvania, at 8:30 Wednesday morning. After a police dog had sniffed our bags -- and one cameraman wiped doggie saliva off his camera lens -- we took our places on or behind a truck riser, while we waited for the vice president's flight to land. A network cameraman was finishing his breakfast of Cheetos and Sprite. A candy bar poked from the top of his shirt pocket.

A more fascinating description of a completely tedious day is rarely told. In 1992, Bill Clinton, then a mere Presidential aspirant, stopped in Burlington for a rally that a bunch of us went down to because, hey, how often do you get to see the guy who might be President firsthand? Adam and Dan, who worked at the radio station, managed to get press passes and went down and watched the event from the press platform, where the guys from CNN and everywhere else had their cameras and microphones and what-have-you. The speech was interesting enough, I guess, but the report from the press pool was one of dirty, suicidally bored reporters reciting the stump speech (including the jokes) word for word, people playing Tetris on their laptops, and a general air of oppression. And this was, by then, pretty clearly the winning campaign. I can only imagine what it's like for those poor bastards who have to follow an obvious loser around for six months or longer.

Of course, if they'd simply avoid being so damned lazy and actually do some substantive reporting (i.e., criticism and analysis) instead of the usual mere transcription then the job might prove a bit more rewarding.
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Hey, wait a minute. Summer ended and I didn't notice.
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Jay Rosen on Philip Gourevitch's talk on the press corps that follows the Presidential candidates.

Cheesy package tour. That was Gourevitch's first impression about traveling with the campaigns. You sign up. You get on the bus. It hits all the major sights. Crowds of people get off at each one. Then they get back on. The campaigns tell you what the schedule is. The campaigns tell you where the pick up will be. The campaigns feed you, get you to the airport, take you from the airport.

"Right there they have you," Gourevitch told our crowd of about 50 journalism students and faculty. "Outside the bubble you cannot go because then you're dirty again and have to be checked by the Secret Service." Under these conditions, he said, "no spontaneous reporting is possible."

Should have already read this in the New Yorker (on paper), but I'm a week or two behind. Besides, it's hard to link to a physical magazine.
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