Blogging the convention
Know your history,
especially what happened to the first regime in convention coverage, why it
yielded to television and how it became a degraded media event. Don’t join
up with the second regime, whose story went dead a long time ago. Pick up
from where Koppel walked out in ’96, and find a reason to be there. If you
have your reason, but you’re in doubt on what to write about, ask yourself
who sent you and your laptop to Beantown. Post an account for them.Report backwards to whatever place you came from– including the opinions
you came from, the political place. Feed the user’s advice forward into
your choices during the three days of whirling events…
Lots more great stuff about conventions and the media over at Jay’s. [I updated the quote slightly after Jay did.]
Good advice. I have no interest in reporting the events for “the record” because there are 15,000 Professional Journalists there who’ll do that far better than I could. I’m going as a citizen who – thanks to blogs – happens to have a (theoretically) global platform. I guess I’m viewing this as being like writing a travelogue for the folks back home, except as a citizen, I’m a partisan with a stake in what happens.
