Convention coverage now comes at blog speed

When you think of convention coverage, your first thought is Walter Cronkite, in black and white. Those were the days when floor fights involved more than just twentysomething bloggers arguing over which cocktail lounge serves the best Cosmo.

Convention coverage — and indeed, campaign coverage in general — has kept pace with with our electronically charged times. Shorter attention spans, widespread Internet access on ever-improving gadgetry, creative takes on traditional subject matter, the spin-and-slam tactics of strategists from both sides of the aisle, and the popularity of punditry on cable television, all have contributed to altering the landscape of coverage of politics in an election year.

Given that just about anyone with a Blackberry can tap out a brief opinion, put it online in seconds, and call himself an expert quicker than anyone can question his credentials, does experience matter anymore when it comes to convention and campaign coverage?

Americans listened to Cronkite, and Chet Huntley and David Brinkley, and Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw, and others like them, because we trusted that they were seasoned journalists who knew what they were doing. That may still be important to many, but others are following these events from sources with questionable credentials. That’s not to say that bloggers are unqualified for the assignment simply because they’re bloggers. But there are so many of them, and they can’t all be Walter Cronkite.

“It depends on the story you want,” said Lynn Sweet of the Chicago Sun-Times. The paper’s Washington bureau chief, she’s been covering politics in the nation’s capitol since 1993, and before that she wrote about politics in and around Chicago for many years.

“I would use a sports analogy,” Sweet continued. “If you had me cover the World Series, my first story might be amusing. But for the rest of the games, people might want to find out what was going on in the dugout, in the locker room, on the field. That’s the same for political coverage.

“Somebody who doesn’t cover politics on a regular basis might provide the side dish, but not the main entrée.”

There is no substitute for experience when it comes to developing sources and obtaining information at conventions, Sweet said. “If you have somebody out there who doesn’t know the people involved and doesn’t know the players or the deputies or the campaign managers standing next to them in the lunch line, then you lose something,” she said.

Casual vs. engaged viewer
Steve Barkan is a senior strategist for SG&A Campaigns, a political consulting firm based in Pasadena, Calif. He has witnessed enormous changes over the last 20 years or so, which he attributes to the rise in cable coverage of politics. But he emphasized that not all viewers are alike.

“There is an important distinction between the casual viewer and the engaged viewer,” he said. “Engaged viewers, beginning in 1988 and 1992, could watch every moment of the convention if they desired. Casual viewers watched only what happened to come before them in prime time, such as two or three key speeches and the official vote.

“Today, the engaged viewer has increased, in large part because of the Internet. Engaged viewers have greater access to schedules on the Internet. But more importantly, there is so much build-up for a wider variety of activities.”

And just as all television programs are not alike — consider “Generation Kill” vs. “Gossip Girl,” for instance, or, better yet, “The O’Reilly Factor” vs. “Countdown With Keith Olbermann.”  Not all conventions and campaigns are equal.

“This is no ordinary election,” Barkan said, “in large part due to the changing demographics and the younger voter. The level of civic dialogue — in the workplace, on the Internet, in the neighborhood — has increased dramatically. And every year, more and more voters are actively seeking information about politics on the Internet.”

Obviously, it wasn’t always this way. Back in 1996, when the Internet was just dawning but cable TV was cooking, Robin Abcarian had a different experience in covering the Republican convention in San Diego.

“The pace then not only seemed a lot slower, as I recall, (but) at least one or two network anchors pulled up stakes and left San Diego early because there was ‘no news,’” recalled Abcarian, a veteran Los Angeles Times reporter and columnist who contributes to the paper’s “Top of the Ticket” campaign blog.

“This time, of course, there is such intense interest in the conventions for a number of reasons — no incumbent is running, Obama’s candidacy is historic, and McCain is a fascinating figure. No one would dream of leaving early.”

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