Tropic Blunder: Convention Pits Texting vs. Press
Media-Suffused Denver Whipped by O-phones; Geezers Bump Into Walls
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Off the Record
DENVER—On Aug. 25, The New York Times’ chief political reporter, Adam Nagourney, was looking for a pair of seats for an interview in a sawdust-ridden tent in the parking lot of Denver’s basketball arena that served as the paper’s media workspace.
The Times wound up bringing so many staffers to this event (60!) that nearly every seat in its space was occupied in that area; he walked over to Bloomberg News, where there were another 30 workstations set up.
The thing about the conventions is that so many reporters come to them. The result is that it’s rare for anyone to write anything important.
“I don’t like events where there are a gazillion reporters,” Mr. Nagourney said. “If you come here and David Axelrod came walking down the aisle over there, there’d be 500 people around him, and you’d be getting the most boilerplate quotes. So what’s the point?”
What is the point?
“I feel like this is the dumb state of reporting in a presidential campaign,” said Michael Scherer, a writer for Time magazine. “Everyone is spending time and millions of dollars to break something six hours before it’s announced.”
Adjustments have to be made. Greta Van Susteren, the Fox News anchor, spent Aug. 25 blogging—“I like the blogging!” she said—and produced 10 blog posts, including an online poll: “What do you think Michelle Obama thinks about Hillary Clinton?”
“There is no intrigue [at the convention],” she said. “But the networks can’t not be here, which is a problem. Not a terrific amount of news is going to happen. We have to be here in case something does happen. It’s the same reason we send reporters down to Crawford to sit there during the president’s vacation. In case something does happen.”
“When we learned Kennedy would appear tonight in the hall, I quickly wrote a Web story—a short six-inch story,” said David Lightman, a McClatchy reporter who has been covering conventions since 1980.
At Media Pavilion 4, where The Times, Bloomberg News, Reuters, Congressional Quarterly, McClatchy, the Hearst papers, the New York Post and the Daily News were all stationed, there’s a “Media Spa.” It didn’t look like one of those places Victorians went to in Switzerland. At noon on Aug. 25, an hour after it opened, the hundreds of reporters there would find three Diet Cokes, three Sprites, one regular Coke, some peach and strawberry fruit blend Dannon yogurts, three oranges, some type of pumpkin bread and four bagels, including two onion, glistening under the giant fluorescent bucket lights. The floors are rough plywood.
“I don’t like it,” said the Bloomberg News editor Al Hunt, who is covering his 17th convention. “It’s chilly and you can’t hear anything. Have you been to the porta-potties here? Because don’t go.”
“No, I’m not interested [in a massage],” said Mr. Lightman. “Not to sound highfalutin, but this is my job. I might grab a Diet Coke, but that’s it.”
That is, if there’s even one to grab.
Gail Collins, the Times columnist, seemed eager at a chance to run away from the sawdust-filled Media Pavilion.
“There’s 10 million people watching TV, and if we can’t find something that’s not on the TV to be useful about, then what the hell is my paper paying me to be here?” she said. “I feel morally obliged to be running around futilely trying to find something. Next Page >
In fact it's the plural of "Mr." What kind of elites style guide would prefer a single six-letter word that very few people know, over two 2-letter words that everyone knows?
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What do you
have in your closet?
How long ago
was it when shoes were just footwear? You threw them on to go play out in the
back yard, or down on the playground. Today, however, having a pair of sneakers
has taken on a whole new meaning, especially when dealing with sports shoes.
What has really made the sneaker culture huge is the sport shoe industry, with
Nike and Adidas pulling up the front. These sports icons have been worn and
styled by not only top athletes, but by people in the music industry.
They say that it was the Nike Dunk
that started it all off. In 1985, Nike brought out the
Nike Dunk.
Originally these sneakers meant for the college community of basketball
players. Instead, this style of sports shoes started the sneaker sub-culture.
Although this style of sneaker was designed to be used during high intensity
basketball games, the spotlight quickly turned to the fashion of wearing them,
what they looked like, and which ones you owned. Twenty years later, Nike has
brought the Nike Dunk back on
the courts with all its retro style and performance.
But why stop
with basketball shoes? In 2000, Nike decided to jump into the skateboarding
scene with the new Nike Skateboarding product line.
With
Nike SB has come the
Nike Dunk SB. For years, before
skateboarding came out from the underground scene, skateboarders utilized the
rugged design of basketball shoes. Nike decided to capitalize on what Vans and
DC shoes had been monopolizing for years, and take what was already an amazing
sneaker, and fit it into the needs of skateboarders. What the
Nike Dunk
SB brought in the way of performance was extra-padded tongue and their
patented Zoom Air insole. In the way of style, this sneaker has already come out
with six series, and names for them like Grip, Forbes, and Vipers.
Another blast
from the past would be the Nike Air
Force 1. These sneakers first came out in the early 80’s. And like the
hip hop culture, their popularity grew. However, this band did not reach their
full fashion peek until 2002 when Nelly released the song “Air
Force Ones”.
The other major
sports shoe brand is the Adicolor
Shoes, an Adidas Original. The design became so popular because the
plain white canvas was adaptable by painting, drawing, and spraying on your own
personal design, and even accessories were sold to help you in your creativity.
In 2006 they pushed the envelope further with a new color series using artists
and designers from all over the world.
Another huge sneaker that was popular with the hip hop world was the
Adidas Superstar. A very raw
and controversial Hip Hop group that helped skyrocket the
Adidas
Superstar to stardom was Run-D.M.C. This cutting edge group was known for
wearing their Superstars out on stage, and even wrote a song dedicated to them
called “My Adidas”. Whether its Nike or Adidas, clean out that closet, dust off
your old sneakers, and get into the game.