I could have gone to both, I decided I didn’t want to go. (Which worked out well, considering I couldn’t walk much.) But there was a larger reason.
As a newspaper editor, I had limited resources and was determined not to assign them in an unthinking, knee jerk way. For instance, one local police department was angry with me because I decided we would no longer do ride-along drug busts or raids. (Oddly enough, they were always requested during election campaigns.) My fellow editors thought I was crazy; they liked that sort of thing. I pointed out we were cooperating in making the cops look good and the arrestees guilty, even though there was a decent chance they weren’t even arresting the right people. I said my job as an editor was to give readers the news they needed, not to do PR for the local cops.
And that’s how I feel about the conventions. A staggering amount of media money spent, and for what? Did you hear anything approaching cogent analysis of issues? Maybe a little (Chris Matthews has a bit of a roll), but wasn’t it something that could have been done back in the studio? It’s a convention, people go there to party and schmooze. No wonder people hate the media.
People hate the media mostly because it is entirely owned by the same corporations who bought all that convention partying and schmoozing. How would it look to the public if all those reporters, talking heads, and editors sat in a New York or Washington studio reporting on events taking place 1000 miles away? Even less credible, right? Besides all the “common people” called delegates like to see themselves in the news and on TV. The dumb bastards. That doesn’t hold true for the real movers and shakers like the Koch brothers and the Sheldon Adelson types. They stay hidden from public view by the people they hire to run the news operations that they own.
There is plenty of news at these conventions. First of all conventions are like the Olympics, people who don’t care about politics watch the conventions, at least for the big speeches. This is the only unfiltered view of the politicians they will get, so conventions are very important from that point of view.
From a reporters perspective they are important for the same reason that SxSW, Burning Man, or the Consumer Electronic trade show is important. The political conventions are the biggest political trade conferences in the world and many critically important deals are done here. Also there will be plenty of strategy sessions, caucuses and so forth that will show the hand of the Powers That Be.
Just watching which Senators or Governors are attracting the most attention is useful to. If I were a reporter I would certainly go.
I disagree. The deals and strategy sessions are done in advance of the convention, and the speeches are far from unfiltered. (Except for Clint Eastwood.)
I never went to a conference or convention that was worth the trip.
This got little coverage from the corporate media. 60 Republican multi-millionaires and billionaires met off site during the Republican convention. They met to plot out the rest of the Republican campaign. That group of wealthy donors were the real convention delegates. The delegates in the convention hall listening to all of those lame speakers babble on abot nothing shall henceforth be known as the suckers.