DNC ’08: Press By the Numbers

There are apparently 15,000 journalists here in Denver. Actually, based on the fact we rarely see people on the sidewalks without some sort of credentials we believe it. But what are they all doing (other than making cupcake videos?)? CJR breaks it down, except for the last part we can attest to most of this being true.

14,000 are wearing terrible suits.

7,500 aren’t doing much at all. This isn’t surprising. Only a small number of reporters actually have a reason to be here.
4,021 are smugly bad-mouthing the convention and its participants in their story ledes.

2,294 are bitching about only having perimeter press passes.

1,026 are drunk. This is as it should be.

500 don’t have credentials, but are trying desperately to get them.

340 are confused about how to find the proper press office inside the Pepsi Center.
150 are in the CNN Grill.

Seven of them are having their photographs taken with Captain Morgan, the rum-loving pirate who, for some reason, was credentialed into the convention.

One of them is frantically trying to engineer a meeting between Captain Morgan and Ted Sorenson, the painfully dignified Democratic legend who is finishing an interview with Tavis Smiley just as Captain Morgan bursts into the tent, T-shirts and Morganettes in tow. That person is me, and, in this, I am a failure. But, then again, we are all sort of failures here.

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