Postcards From The Echo Chamber, Part II

Lileks has this to say about the bloggers at the convention.

I was disappointed in the contributions of bloggers at the convention. The best of the batch, natch, was the Matt Welch / Tim Blair blog at Reason, which had the virtue of being written by smart good writers who had two different takes on the event. But otherwise: meh. The very idea of a “blogger’s row” is wrong; no journo is going to sit at the bureau’s HQ and write stories. You go out, you report, you come back, you write. Veteran conventioneers know this well. Every one of them has found himself sitting at the terminal in some makeshift room, sweating, tie loosened, staring at the screen, wondering how they can write something they can live with. The real stories are the off-site marvels, the drunken parties, the expense-account suppers, the barroom arguments, but no one gets a Pulitzer for that. Even if you write a book about it, no one will read it – Ted White is dead, and no one nowadays really wants to read long accounts of losing campaigns filtered through the sepia tones of Noble Autumn. I mean, the best story of the 1996 RNC convention took place at the wrap-up party at Dick Head’s bar in Houston, complete with snarly bikers, jello shots, hundreds of bras hanging from the ceiling, dozens of heavily-hammered writers, and something later about French Toast somewhere. I remember being in the back seat when we hit a curb. Then there was syrup.

He's right, of course.

If I weren't completely buried in work right now - or if I were at a job where I could take paid vacation - I'd love to go cover the GOP convention. But unlike my esteemed Northern Alliance colleagues Rocket Man and Ed, I don't think I'd be interested in covering the scene at Madison Square Garden.

No, at this convention, the real story is going to be out on 34th Street. I'd love to blog from among the crowd; the dimbulb in the huge Bush papier-mache head, the "Have Sex For Kerry" crowd, the "Bellydancers for Nader" area, the whole madding, maddened, mad herd of the fly-eaten, the perpetually (or professionally) outraged, the preternaturally concerned - that's where the story's going to be.

Sigh.

Next time...

Posted by Mitch at August 3, 2004 07:09 AM | TrackBack