It’s no secret that the Democratic National Convention in Boston
is a big mess. Road closings are likely to shut down the city. The convention is so short on money
that organizers had to cut costs by moving the media center two
blocks from the FleetCenter, relying on corporate sponsors to
handle much of the catering and party planning, and outsource work
to out-of-state labor for things like construction and video
production. Local unions are up in arms about the non-windfall of
jobs, and several have threatened to picket the convention.
It’s no surprise, then, that the much-ballyhooed introduction of
press credentials for bloggers should go less-than-smoothly.
I’m not a full-time employee of TAS or any other
publication, and the traditional rules for press credentials
prohibit freelancers. Though I don’t expect that this rule is
enforced with very much rigor, I applied for press credentials
under my blog
anyway. What fun, I thought, to be part of the convention-blogging
experiment, to play with various multimedia technology on my own
site, and to have the freedom of working on my own behalf, thus not
having to worry about the guilt of reporting for one publication
with another publication’s press pass.
So I was happy to receive a letter in the mail confirming that
my credentials had been approved. I was quite a bit less happy to
receive this email the next day:
Dear John Tabin:
Last week you were sent a credential allocation letter not
properly authorized by the DNCC for press coverage of the 2004
Democratic National Convention.
Upon further review of the overall site capacity at the
FleetCenter, we are no longer able to issue your organization a
DNCC Press Gallery Credential. We apologize for any inconvenience
this may cause. Again, we thank you for your interest in covering
the 2004 Democratic National Convention and wish you well in your
endeavors.
Sincerely,
Francesca Gage and Michael Hurlbut
Directors of the DNCC Press Gallery
I found it a bit strange that my letter could be deemed “not
properly authorized,” seeing as it was signed, by hand, by Ms. Gage
herself.
Bill, the conservative blogger who maintains INDC Journal, got
the same treatment, leading many in the blogosphere to conclude that the
DNCC Press Gallery was eliminating bloggers by ideology.
Eric Schnure, one of the official DNCC bloggers,
told Jay Rosen, plausibly enough, that the “vast
majority of applications came from left-leaning or progressive
bloggers. Therefore, the vast majority of credentialed bloggers are
left-leaning and progressive. Likewise, the vast majority of
bloggers who received a credential in error are also left-leaning
and progressive.” I’ve found at least one lefty blogger who indeed
got his credentials canceled, the self-described “unpopular and nigh-unread blogger
Justin Nawrocki.”
When I called Francesca Gage to ask about the error, she
referred me, after I began to probe, to a consultant for the DNCC
Press Gallery, veteran Democratic flack Lorraine Boles. (She was
Director of Communication for Al Gore back when he was Vice
President.) Boles told me that over 200 bloggers had applied, and
that the Press Gallery had been overwhelmed. “”We feel really badly
about it,” she said, calling the situation a “snafu.” The word
“snafu,” of course, is derived from military acronym that is
particularly apt to the Boston Convention.
Boles adamantly denied any ideological vetting, saying there
were “conservative bloggers” approved. But all of the bloggers I
could find touting their credentials were left-of-center, leading
me to wonder just who these conservative bloggers were.
As it turns out, Patrick Bolton of the prominent rightish OxBlog
posted yesterday that the OxBloggers had “just
received a very nice call from the DNC, saying very kind words
about our blog and inviting us to cover the Boston convention as an
accredited blogger.”
Interestingly enough, Belton posted that at 1:45 EDT. I spoke
with Boles, according to my cell phone log (which usually runs a
few minutes fast), between 12:13 and 12:25.
“CYA” was also, originally, a military acronym, for something
that’s obviously not quite as easy a trick in the digital age.
