Leader of the Pack
by Jacob Schneider
The Fleet Center was packed, so it was no surprise that I ended up pressed up against someone. He was short and middle-aged. Around his neck, he wore a lanyard with the requisite red cardboard Democratic National Convention press pass and a keychain with IDs from several major news organizations identifying him as a staff photographer. Like everybody else, his eyes were fastened to the TV screen where a charismatic John Edwards was mid-speech.
“You look a little bit young to be here.” He glanced at me quizzically.
I gestured at my dark blue “Youth Radio” t-shirt and at my press pass and explained how I got there. I started with the two years that I’d spent recording commentaries at Youth Radio’s newsroom in Berkeley and continued with the cross-country red-eye flight that delivered me and my fellow reporters and producers to Boston. I told him how earlier that night we’d gotten a one-hour pass to actually go onto the convention floor, but had to leave just as Edwards was introduced.
“So that’s why I’m here, in this crowded hallway in front of a McDonalds instead of down there between Tennessee and Michigan where I should be,” I finished.
“…And if you’re a poor single mother with seven kids, three mortgages, and a yeast infection, hope is on the way!” responded John Edwards. I rolled my eyes and gave my new photographer friend a defeated shrug.
“You know, maybe you had to leave the convention floor when you did so that you would appreciate the time you had there,” he said. “Maybe you should take some time to appreciate this entire experience.”
“I never thought about it that way,” I mused.
He laughed. “Of course you didn’t. What are you, sixteen?”
* * *
I’ve never been very good at actually doing anything. Although I played the customary years of little league baseball, I was always the benchwarmer who pinch-hit right when my team needed a quick strikeout. I failed my driver’s test the first time I took it, although if you ask me, the gods sent rain just to spite me. I’ve tried my hand at acting over the years, but maybe it means something that the pinnacle of my short career was my portrayal of Juliet’s nurse in “Romeo and Juliet.” Suffice it to say that I’m a much better observer than participant.
Of course, this makes me the perfect journalist. There’s a saying that goes: “Those who can’t do teach.” It might as well say: “Those who can’t do either teach or dutifully observe others and write about it.” When you get down to it, that’s what journalism really is, a way to share in the glory of an accomplishment or the shock of a scandal without actually, well, doing anything yourself. I see journalism as the ideal “revenge of the nerds” profession, just slightly more realistic and acceptable than the mad scientist who takes over the universe or the geek-turned-superhero.
So, when the journalistic opportunity of a lifetime came my way in the summer of 2004, I had to go for it. Youth Radio offered me the chance to cover the Democratic National Convention in Boston.
It wasn’t a particularly contentious convention. By the time the spotlight hit Boston, everyone knew that John Kerry was the presidential nominee. However, Democratic interests had united in an effort to unseat President Bush. In the same room, one could find ex-Republican Gulf War vets and Al Franken of Air America. Right-wing protestors had camped out along the entryway to the convention center armed with posters with gruesome pictures of aborted fetuses and megaphones. There was a heavy Boston police presence in response to the ever-present threat of terrorism. In short, it was total chaos. The DNC was my first introduction to real-world journalism and it wasn’t quite what I’d expected.
Considering that my previous experience with journalism was confined to the King Middle School Cobra, the Berkeley High Jacket, and KPFB-FM (transmitted throughout one square mile of Berkeley), most of my expectations were formed with the help of Hollywood. I envisioned myself ducking into smoke-filled rooms under cover of dark sunglasses or filing live reports in front of the burning wreckage of the Fleet Center. Perhaps I would meet secret contacts in parking garages in the dead of night like Woodward and Bernstein in “All the President’s Men.” I saw stacks of plaques honoring my valiant contribution to the democratic process. In truth, I half expected that mine would be a household name by the end of the week.
I was to be bitterly disappointed by the mainstream media scene. The journalism of a national party convention is the journalism of Darwin. You know that scene in “Mean Girls” when the students are transformed into jungle animals competing for their survival? Abandoning all social norms, the students attack each other physically and claw at each other’s faces. Replace the backpacks with cameras and microphones and you have a real press gaggle. Nobody’s competing for exclusives or original news. You’re just trying to tread water and not fall behind the day’s news.
* * *
My first lesson in resisting pack journalism came soon after we landed in Boston. The Youth Radio DNC contingent included four adult producers, six reporters (of whom I was the youngest), and a mountain of video and audio equipment. Every day began with an editorial meeting to decide what each of us would cover.
I expected that we’d hit the ground running the day before the convention started. We’d pick up our press passes and start to generate some excitement. I’d file that report that everyone’s heard a million times. You know, the one that goes: “The mood at the Fleet Center today is somber but expectant…” (and then you quickly tune it out). It seemed like the right thing to do. It seemed like the journalistic thing to do. But we didn’t do it.
“Everyone’s at the Fleet Center today so that’s not where our story is,” said producer Nick. He was right. As soon as we got off the subway in downtown Boston, we could see the satellite trucks and chirpy reporters thronging the streets surrounding the convention center. However we headed away from the Fleet Center and instead gathered tape in Boston’s historic Italian North End.
“If we produce the same story that everyone else is, NPR’s not going to want to take it from us,” Nick explained. “They’ll already have it from their own reporters. We need to try to find something interesting and unique.”
And so we wandered the narrow cobblestone alleys of the North End, seeking out the local voices that the major media channels were sure to overlook. At first it wasn’t too easy finding interesting perspectives. Two teenage skateboarders were more interested in talking about Boston’s hardcore scene than national politics. A restaurant manager on a smoking break explained that he was sure that the DNC would draw a terrorist attack—right before diving behind a parked car when a news helicopter flew over.
But then we began to gain some momentum. We walked into a local coffee shop for some snacks and were serenaded in Italian by a pair of old men. They’d lived in the North End for their entire lives and treated us to canolis. When I asked one of them what he would say to the politicians converging on his city if he got the chance, he looked me straight in the eye, pounded my chest, and said, “Speak from the heaht, don’t speak from the mouth. Because if you speak from the heaht you can’t say anything wrong. Right?”
Then we turned a corner and ran into a parade for some forgotten Catholic saint that Boston’s Italians had faithfully kept alive. As the brass band led a crowd of local characters and confused tourists to a modest street festival, we got a chance to talk to one of the celebration’s organizers.
“I’m excited about the convention because I heard that Stacey Keibler and Mick Foley will be there,” she exclaimed. For the record, Stacy Keibler and Mick Foley are professional wrestlers.
When we returned to the flat in Cambridge where we’d set up shop and got to work editing down the hours of tape into a one-minute sound byte, I could feel that we had something good. When we posted our distilled, greatest hits of the North End piece on the Youth Radio website that night, I was glad that we hadn’t just produced the same tired pre-convention story. We hadn’t become part of the pack.
* * *
That’s not to say that we completely shunned the convention. We were there to cover the DNC, after all, and we couldn’t do that entirely from the outside.
But for a convention reporter, I spent surprisingly little time at the convention itself. We only had four credentials to get into the big show, so we had to share. I spent most of each day at a variety of boring, but convention-related events throughout the city and most of each night in a mad dash to produce something, anything, from the material I’d gathered.
Some stories were easier to find than others. Nick and I showed up the second day of the convention at the Youth Caucus, where Rock the Vote representatives were rallying young delegates into a voter-registering frenzy. As it turned out, they got some help in their efforts from none other than the WWE’s Stacy Keibler and Mick Foley who were in town to promote “Smackdown the Vote.” (So maybe next time I’ll think twice before I make fun of my sources. Not.)
Partway through the festivities, a convention staffer wordlessly pulled the two of us into a side hallway and breathlessly exclaimed, “Wait here. They’re coming!”
I didn’t know who “they” were, but I expected to find some D-rate actor and his washed up Berkeley folk singer friend promoting Democratic values (with a capital “D”). The convention was full of those gimmicks. You never quite knew if you were going to get a bona fide politician or Mary Jean from Port Arthur, who voted for Bush in 2000, but was sure as hell changing her vote in ‘04!
This time, we stumbled onto the real deal. Soon after our over-excited DNC rep left us to languish in an anonymous hallway, we were approached by a group of fellow reporters surrounding John Kerry’s two daughters. Nick signaled that the tape was running, so I took a deep breath and stepped forward.
“I’m Jacob Schneider from Youth Radio. What do you think is the most effective way to organize young voters?” I asked. I saw Nick jockey for good mic position next to Vanessa Kerry. She and her sister Alexandra briefly expounded on the “Kerry Dorm Storm” and then moved on to giggling and talking about living with a presidential candidate. The press conference was soon over. I was ecstatic. I’d addressed a real sort-of celebrity; I couldn’t wait to listen to the tape.
Nick was even more excited.
“Did you see that? I just got hit on by Vanessa Kerry!” he yelled. I didn’t believe him.
“Oh man,” he moaned. “She was stroking my arm for the entire press conference. I even got a look from Alexandra.” I still didn’t believe him. He couldn’t believe that I didn’t believe him.
When we got back to Cambridge, I wanted to play the tape. I put the minidisk into the machine and pressed play. I got dead air. I searched through the previous tracks. Dead air.
“Hey, Nick,” I said. “It looks like you were so enthralled by the Kerry sisters that you forgot to hit record.”
Yet another important lesson in journalism: always remember to show up.
* * *
John Edwards’ speech was long over and my photographer friend was long gone. As I stood in the nearly abandoned Fleet Center hallway, I could hear the roll call from on the convention floor. It was merely a formality—by the time Iowa came around, John Kerry had enough votes to secure the nomination. I was standing at a bank of pay phones, waiting for late-night KCBS anchor to introduce me on air. I was to speak on the challenge of mobilizing young voters and I had all of my lines well rehearsed: unstable economic situations, little attention from candidates, lack of political knowledge. My night at the convention was drawing to a close and all I had as a souvenir was a glossy “Hope is on the way!” sign that I’d stolen from an unwitting delegate.
And yet I was still stuck on that idea. “Maybe you should take some time to appreciate this entire experience,” he’d said.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that my DNC experience was not contained within the Fleet Center. I realized that real journalism is not watching a speech that’s live on every major network anyway or dashing from press conference to press conference. The convention didn’t totally turn me off to professional journalism, it just made me think a little bit more about exactly what kind of writer I want to be. As I left the Fleet Center that night, I made an agreement with myself not to just become one of the pack, a mouthpiece for someone else’s story.
Sure, it would’ve been cool to stay between Tennessee and Michigan and feel like a party insider and successful reporter. But who wouldn’t rather be serenaded in Italian at a neighborhood café by a pair of old men any day?