We Media, convention-style: more moonshine than history
Last night was “a night for history.” USAToday said so this morning.
I guess the Nation’s Newspaper thought I missed it, marginalized as it was. The editors probably thought I was too busy switching between the convenient coverage by the networks (musn’t pre-empt America’s Got Talent). Or shouting at the mind-numbing graphics and prolific pundits filling cable TV’s gavel-to-gavel coverage. Or recycling expanded newspaper sections filled with typing instead of reporting. Or watching the Web watch the convention. Or the media covering the media.
Maybe USA Today just thought I was too busy Twittering to understand the significance of Obama’s nomination. In case there was any doubt, The Washington Post cleared it up with the banner headline “Democrats Nominate Obama”.
I didn’t count, but newsies said 15,000 members of the news media were sent to Denver to cover the few people among the 4,000 delegates who didn’t get the message about an outcome that had already been decided. That doesn’t count bloggers and vloggers, official and unofficial, who got in, hung out, or pretended to cover the Democratic Convention by watching others do it.
From their fancy sets inside the convention hall, to the massage chairs in the bloggers’ Big Tent, to the taverns rented for mingling with the real people, the media were manipulated to an extent that can only be described as historic. The Obama campaign found as many willing victims among new media as they did among the old as it elegantly orchestrated an event designed to be inspirational. Got me, too. Michelle, Hillary, Bill and Joe brought a lump to my throat. Now I can’t stop the emails and video they send me daily. I had greater hopes for the connected society, and from Barack, than junk emails, SMS spam and requests for money.
There was only one story at the convention; the rest was moonshine. Now I’m left with a hangover instead of a sense of history.
