Jane Maglaque Rocks the Vote at the Democratic National Convention

I get bored really easily. While I am very much guilty of having my “lazy days” in which
I stare blankly at the television for probably an unhealthy amount of time, I can only do it for so long. With that in mind, five months ago I planned my summer.

One thing lead to another, and I found myself in the basement of Abbott Hall on the phone with my mother, telling her I had just received a phone call from a Rock the Vote staff member who told me that in a few months I should pack all of my belongings and move to Washington, DC because I was accepted as a summer intern.

Want an even crazier situation? Two weeks after starting my internship, I was booking another flight but this time to Denver, Colorado because one of my supervisors had given me permission to attend and work at the Democratic National Convention.

As my plane touched the ground in Denver two months later, I thought about the hours that I had put into making the DNC run as smoothly as possible.

Among several other things, Rock the Vote, a non-partisen and non-profit organization, was hosting a concert the opening day of the DNC, called Ballot Bash. All summer I had worked on organizing informational packets for all Rock the Vote staff who were going to Denver, booking hotel rooms (often at the last minute), booking ground transportation for various musical artists who would be performing at Ballot Bash (including Farell Williams, Nick Cannon and Pete Wentz, and Ashlee Simpson to name a few) and sitting in on countless hours of meetings about every single detail that one could imagine. All summer I was in a never-ending world seating charts, tickets, transportation, binders, papers, meetings, e-mails, confusion, failures and successes.

And that event was just on Monday. The thought of Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday was enough to drive me crazy. However, this is undoubtedly what I love to do. I never wanted to leave work. I loved everything about the craziness of the behind-the-scenes madness that went into planning just a few hours of one night.

And then it became that Monday. All Rock the Vote staff had safely arrived in Denver. I was at the Ellie Caulkins Opera House (where we held our concert) at 7:15 a.m. I did not sit down all day. I shadowed the Deputy Director of Rock the Vote who was also “point person”, or person in charge of, Ballot Bash. I answered her phone, escorted celebrities, helped with media, directed people to the VIP after party, answered and helped with more logistical issues than I ever thought possible and more. It was probably one of the best days of my life and something I will never forget. It was also without a doubt the craziest and most fun day of my entire life.

The week continued as I worked at another party on Tuesday night that Lifetime and Rock the Vote co-sponsored. Furthermore, on Tuesday, I hit another milestone when I got to go into a real studio and witness Murs, a rapper, shoot a PSA for Rock the Vote.

Wednesday was when I actually got to enjoy the convention. After ridiculously tight security, I was able to actually be on the floor at the Pepsi Center. It was an incredible experience. When I first got on the floor, I immediately got chills all over my body. At age18, I’m actually here. Touching the same ground where history was made.

Then Thursday came, the craziest day of all. I found myself sitting on a sidewalk in
Denver, waiting in line to pick up Rock the Vote staff’s credentials for Obama’s speech at Invesco. At this point, I was completely falling apart. My feet literally were bleeding from standing so much and for the past several nights, I was getting about three hours of sleep a night. However, I couldn’t have been happier. It had been the best four days of my life and I knew that I had another incredible day in front of me.

Seven hours later, I found myself in another line. However, this line was a lot bigger. There were around 8,000 people standing between me and Invesco. After waiting on line for around three hours, it dawned on me and the other six or so Rock the Vote staff members who I was with, that the Democratic National Convention Committee (DNCC) had oversold Obama’s speech, and there was a chance that we wouldn’t make it to see him and the other speakers. As we watched people get out of line, give up and go home, one of the staff members realized that she knew someone working for the DNCC. Well long story short, 10 minutes later, I was in the front of a line that would have taken me at least another four hours to get past. Turns out connections do come in handy.

And then Obama, Biden, Stevie Wonder, John Legand, Will.i.am, Bill Richardson, Al Gore and more happened. I sat in my seat, waving my American flag and witnessing history with over 70,000 other people. I don’t think that there is any order in which I can hit the keys on my keyboard of my computer that will ever fully explain the atmosphere in Invesco, or what it was truly like to be there.

Two hours later I was on my flight back to Connecticut and 24 hours after returning home I found myself unpacking my bag in my dorm room at Mount Holyoke College.

My first night at college I lay in bed and thought about the whirlwind that had just happened to me. I thought about all of the people I had met and the connections that I had formed not only during the DNC, but also during my summer. I had seen Al Gore (twice), John Edwards, and Ryan Gosling speak live. I had had a full conversation with Will.i.am, gone to several free concerts, made life-long friendships and even met someone who will be mentoring me so that one day, I can be, as she is, a delegate.

All of these things have already carried into my college life. I am joining the Young Democrats and I also plan to design my own major in Political Communications.

If you didn’t get the opportunity to spend the summer in Washington or see Obama in Denver, there are still countless ways to get involved. You can find all of this out a Rockthevote.com and don’t, don’t, don’t, don’t forget to register to vote (you can also do this at Rockthevote.com)!!!!

Getting ready for Ballot Bash with Deputy Director Chrissy Faessen and DJ SKEE.
Fall Out Boy performing at Rock the Vote's Ballot Bash.

At the Pepsi Center.

Press Coverage and Personal Secrets

Alan Schwarz marks the anniversary of the day that "Leonard Shecter’s Secret Led to Candid Sports Reporting" in Sunday's New York Times. The gist is that there used to be a "gentleman's agreement" between sports writers and the athletes they covered that reporters would ignore n0n-sports related stories they saw while in the presence of the players. When The New York Post published a story on a dust-up on the team train betweeen Ryne Duran and Ralph Houk of the Yankees, it forced other reporters to pay attention to such stuff or face the wrath of editors who wanted to know how they missed it.

The result, Schwarz says, was a major change in the relationship between reporters and players. "Yankees players never spoke to reporters in the same way again," he writes. "They watched their backs and kept more matters to themselves."


I attended a conference at Harvard five years ago, at which Marvin Kalb, a White House reporter during the Kennedy Administration, told a very similar story. He said that people knew about the shenanigans of the president at the time, but did not report any of it because it was all considered unncecssary and sordid to do so. Kalb felt strongly that the behavior of journalists since then -- especially towards President Clinton -- did irreparable damage to the political system.

While I agree that prurient stories with no particular political or social merit are at best useless and that at worst they drag the whole community into ugly behavior, can it be that we want to trust journalists to decide to exclude any bad behavior based on a gentleman's agreement? A professional standard of relevance and seriousness is one thing, but a blackout is another.

If the fight between Duran and Houk was a passing moment with no impact on the team, then it should have been ignored. On the other hand, if the Yankees were affected by it, then beat reporters need to include it.

Covering al Jazeera Covering the Convention

Here are two very interesting stories on al Jazeera in St. Paul. The Poynter piece raises a particularly interesting question: what to do when a central theme in another country's politics literally does not translate?

http://www.poynter.org/column.asp?id=129&aid=150020

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/story/2008/08/28/ST2008082801803.html

Money and the Convention

The New York Times yesterday included a story on Robert "Woody" Johnson '65, who is a major donor to the McCain campaign. Arthur Anthony '07 stopped in to see Mr. Johnso during the convention, and it's true that he had his own, separate, suite. It's also true that he was not the only one.

But that's not really the story, if you ask me. A more important story, alluded to in earlier posts, is that a prime media location at the convetion costs money, in set up costs, personnel and the like. Al Jazeera put up the money so it could get the exposure -- essentially, the advertizing -- provided by a lighted sign at eye-level for TV cameras.

So did Pajamasmedia.com. I went up to their prime location and spoke with producer Mark Johnson, a friendly young man in jeans you stepped in when founder/correspodent Roger Simon returned to work after offering a half serious repsonse to my initial question about the spit and the resources. ("I wondered how you all managed such a good spot at a convention at which bloggers in general have complained about their being shunted," I said. "They have treated us very well," Simon quipped. "We are well-known enemies of John McCain.")

Johnson explained that Pajamasmedia launched PJTV, its web-based TV station just on Monday, at the opening of the convention. A "right-center" organization, pajamasmedia aims itself at the "PHI" (Politically Hybrid Individual) in the American political scene. Gordon Pennoyer '99 told me that McCain attributed his eventual victory in party primaries to the performance of blogs like Pajamasmedia.com in New Hampshire.

What's this have to do with money? Although Pajamasmedia does take ads, and touts the high income and educational levels of its readers (http://pajamasmedia.com/advertising/), the sheer volume of the ads (or lack thereof) suggests the site does not make its money that way. Mr. Johnson said that PJTV was "based on a subscription model," but almost all of its content is available for free.

My hunch is that Mr. Simon bankrolls the thing himself. If that's right, then Mr. Simon got more than direct influence with McCain (as Johnson did). He got FoxNews-style favored access to the news. If that becomes a pattern, we are in new territory.

A Funny Thing Happened at the Forum

All work and no play makes Jane a dull girl.

On Tuesday night, as Arthur Anthony '07 and I sat in the convention hall listening to Fred Thompson's moving, patriotic and totally irrelevant speech, we witnessed one of those odd moments in the life of a journalist. Ann Curry, star of NBC's Today Show was two rows in front of us, watching and photographing the hall. She was loading the pictures onto her Apple Macbook, and as she did so she engaged in a video "conference" with a young girl and a man. I figure they must have been her family, because they were dressed for bed, and Curry frenetically blew them kisses for several minutes. Every once in a while she would lift the computer over her head and face it to the convention hall, especially when there was a big round of applause or a dramatic lighting effect. (The show as kind of like a concert at that point.)

Arthur and I might have been the only two in the place who could see it -- we were sort of behind the stage and to the side -- but because Curry was seated with a man with headphones on, whom I presumed to be her producer, it looked like she was "on the job" at the time. It was a strangely public private moment, much worse that a loud cell phone converation on the subway.

The Today webssite highlights her recent travels, so I guess she has been away from home for a while, and missed her family. The costs of fame, I suppose ...

What's al Jazeera doing at the Republican Convention?

One of the first things I noticed when I walked on to the floor of the Excel Center, where the convetnion is being held, was the al Jazeera sign. It's the same kind of sign as those marking the luxury boxes occupied by NPR or cbsnewsnet and other organizations, but somehow the presence of a news organization often labeled as a front for terrorism by the Bush administration jarred me.

I asked Gordon Pennoyer '99 about al Jazeera's presence, and he acknolwedged that not everyone in te party was excited about the prominence of the Arabic news service's display, but that he had defnded their right to be here just like any other news outlet.

I did wonder, though, why al Jazeera even wanted to be here. Did its audience really watch party conventions closely?

So I went upstairs and asked. I met the producer assigned to to the convention, and put the question to her directly. "What happens in the United States affects the whole world," she said, "and people want to know who will be the next president." She said she had also been to Denver for the Democratic convention.

But why not just show feeds from the pool, or comment on reports on CNN? What news, what details, could be gathered here in St. Paul, Minnesota that her audience would covet? Beyond the speeches and the fanfare, what does a convention have that is important to people in Qatar or Lebanon?

"We have to show our audience that we are independent of American media," she said. "We also want to make it clear that we are a news organization, like CNN, that covers big events like this one."

When she told me that she worked not for al Jazeera English, but al Jazeera Arabic, she only amplified the point. People with little or no working knowledge of the English language considered the Republican convention to be the most important story in the world.

I then asked why the organization decided for such a prominent (and expensive) location at the convention, when even al Jazeera-English was not there. She replied that the two al Jazeera outfits were entirely separate and had little to do with each other, and that it was even more important for the Arabic version, once referred to by President Bush as the "mouthpiece oif Osama bin Laden," to show itself at both conventions.

In other words, being at the convention really is not about reporting, per se. Judging from their coverage of the covention, even CNN and MSNBC have little actual orginal work to do there. Instead, it's about a form of representation. They are there to demonstrate that they have the reach and the resources to be there, and that they have credibility as a result.

At the Republican Convention

Gordon Pennoyer '99 brought me out here to look at the convention operations from the inside. He is deputy director of media operations here, and issued me media credentials which allow me to go almost anywhere in the convention hall.

My primary question before I came out here still has not been answered: why does any journalist need to be here?

For the TV people, the answer is clearer. This is a big event, with lots of celebrities of various kinds milling about in an easily accessible location. If they were not here, what would Katie Couric and Ann Curry be doing (especially now that Hurricane Gustav has passed?

For others, I'm not so sure. As far as I could see, nothing happened here that could not have been gathered from the pool feed set up by the RNC. And based on the coverage in this morning's TV and print reports, no one else saw anything of note, either.

On the other hand, a presence here does confer stature. Two media outlets provide useful illustrations. One is pajamasmedia.com, an on-line news cite with a new web cam capability. While some bloggers (including, ironically, PJ TV) complained about being relegated to the nose bleed seats in the stadium, PJ TV acquired (that is, purchased, for $40,000) a large presence on the TV-level podiums used by news organizations smaller thatn the big four TV networks.

The second is AL Jazeera, which is here with a big, visible sign. Apparently only the Arabic division is here, but clearly its presence is symbollic.

When is a Scandal "Fit to Print"

I first heard accusations of John Edwards' infidelity last week, when I happened upon a piece in The National Review print version (also found here) complaining of "liberal bias." Columnist Andrew York wanted to know why the "mainstream media" did not cover such an obviously important story. It was a fair question, although the rest of his column was hash; he seemed to be saying that the postion of The New York Times and the local Raliegh News & Observer should run the story just because the National Enquirer did so, whether the gfacts could be verified or not.

Especially since the press is frequently (and rightly) accused of serving as an echo chamber for its own stuff -- repeating unconfirmed stories only because they are reported, not because they are true -- I applaud the restraint on the part of those who did not print salacious stuff for the sake of a summer splash. I'm even supportive of the policy of The Los Angleles Times, as hostilely described by York, forbidding bloggers to comment on the story until it had been confirmed.

But it's also true that the MSM, as York and others conspiracy theorists like to call it, should have checked the story. According to New York Times public editor Clark Hoyt, that reporting did not happen. Bill Keller of the Times turned up his nose at the Enquirer reports as beneath the paper of record.

The accusations of "liberal bias" ought to be disspelled with no more difficulty than it takes to point out that The Wall Street Journal -- not exactly Mother Jones -- left the story alone, too. For reporters and editors, even at The Gray Lady, to keep the wack-jobs like York at bay, though, they have to do their jobs well. In this case they did not.