I was cleaning up my office now that the transit of Venus has moved it into the House of Mercury, which only happens ever 17 years, and I came across this button:

(That’s me now, not nine years ago. Not that there’s any difference at all. None!, I tell you, just a tad too insistently.)

Yes, that’s an official button issued to the about thirty-five bloggers who were given press credentials for the Democratic National Convention of 2004, the one at which the Democrats insured their victory over the vastly unpopular, war-starting George W by nominating John Kerry instead of Howard Dean.

Well, anyway.

This was the first time bloggers had been given press credentials for a national political convention, and it was quite a thrill. Here’s a list of the bloggers from the Wall Street Journal.

And here’s a post of mine with some photos. They’re heavy on correspondents from The Daily Show because they were doing a piece about those durn bloggers. I declined to be interviewed because I am a coward.

Here’s my post about Kerry’s acceptance speech.

Here are some reflections about the experience.

But most of the posts are gone. I was blogging the DNC for the Boston Globe and the posts are gone from its site. Even Archive.org doesn’t have nuthin’ from the Globe site during that week.

So, yes, History, cry “Alackaday!” and stain your blank pages with salt.

Be the first to comment »

Shelley wonders how many of the bloggers credentialed are women. Good question.

How many women applied? Did the credentialers notice or care? And was political position one of the considerations? And where’s the list of those who got credentialed? We really need more transparency from the folks who did the credentialing…

3 Comments »

Jay Rosen:

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.

3 Comments »

I just received a letter (paper and everything) saying that I’ve been credentiaed to blog from the Democratic Convention. Woohoo!

25 Comments »