Since I gather that much of the TV viewing audience got to hear the sultry sounds of bloviating pundits instead of an excellent speech by Senator Kerry last night, let me suggest people take a look.

The convention was more than a little overcrowded last night, so I returned to the Media Matters convention mothership to watch the coverage on multiple monitors tuned to the three cable news networks.  The lack of coverage of the actual speeches was shocking.  The great strength of the medium of television is that it can provide coverage of live events, and for better or for worse conventions are scripted to take advantage of that.

The “story” here is simply the event itself.  Networks are under no obligation to cover it, but if they choose to do so their viewers would be better served  by cutting down on the instant analysis andd letting the speakers have their moment.  A Denver resident on the bus this morning who lacked cable and had no access to C-SPAN’s raw coverage was quite upset about all that she was missing.

Newspapers, too, are going overboard, with The New York Times sending 60 staffers, ensuring that reporters desperate to justify their presence will spend their time trying to find a story and end up downplaying the actual event in their quest for fresh narrative. Columnist Gail Collins shares my take:

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.”

There are reasons for reporters to be here - professional networking, valuable personal experience, and, yes, fun - but in their quest to provide original reporting instead of simply conveying the reality of the event they’re likely fail to appropriately represent the action to their readers.

No I’m not referring to the largely mythical conflict between former Clinton supporters and the Obama campaign. Instead I’m referring to the unwillingness of Florida Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz, co-chair of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee’s top tier Red to Blue program, to support Democratic congressional candidate Annette Taddeo, who paid a visit to The Big Tent yesterday, against her Republican rival. While the mainstream press regularly rails about the evils of partisanship, what’s far more troublesome is the tendency of members of the insider class to frequently circle the wagons to protect their own. If Taddeo triumphs in November, there might be some tensions in the Florida Democratic Congressional Delegation.

I wonder if any of their on-air personalities will wonder out loud if this was done deliberately.

Pennsylvania Obama delegate Josh Uretsky

This convention is crowded. Really really crowded. I attended the 2004 convention in Boston and it didn’t get this crowded until the final day of the convention. That’s when most of the celebrities and VIPs showed up, when presumably more and more people managed to finagle credentials for the convention through various connections. Things got so crowded the final night of that convention that at some relatively early point in the evening all access to the arena itself was closed. Go to the bathroom, lose your seat. It was almost that crowded last night, making the decision to move the final night to the much larger Invesco Field a smart one.

Walking around the hallways of arena is a surreal experience due to the amazing cast of characters who are wandering around. It isn’t that there are celebrities around, it’s that there are several types of celebrities. While snapping a picture of Tucker Carlson I missed the fact that Jimmy Carter was walking by. PA State Rep. Tony Payton, Jr. excitedly informed me that he’d just seen Spike Lee. All of this is taking place in the somewhat less than glamorous environment of the hallways of a basketball arena, and such people are walking by the hot dog stands along with staffers, less well-known media figures, and, of course, the delegates.

For observers of politics in this country, the best place to watch the political conventions is sitting at home in front their television sets.  The broadcast portions of the convention really are made for TV events designed to influence voter opinion, and they look very different on TV than they do from the insider the convention hall.  In addition, the media celebrities decide that their analysis of events is often more important than the events themselves, causing some speakers to disappear from the lineup and notice of pundits unable to listen and talk at the same time.  Ultimately the people at home get a partially filtered and instantly analyzed event, something they’re already used to if they had watched the Olympics.

Coverage of the event by reporters and TV talkers involves inventing rather arbitrary narratives and expectations (”What Obama Needs To Do Tonight Is…”)  and then shoehorning whatever happened into that narrative and judging whether those manufactured expectations were met.  It isn’t enough to watch the convention from inside the hall to form an opinion about how well it might be received outside the hall as it’s necessary to get a sense of what’s being conveyed to viewers at home.

Making my point for me, someone on CNN just said, “The mainstream media narrative is what will drive this coverage going forward.”  Indeed.

I’ve arrived here in The Big Tent, a location set up outside of the convention security perimeter for blogger types and related to congregate during the convention.  Aside from just providing a space to work and network, there is also a full schedule of panel presentations throughout the week.  And beer.

It, too, it must be said, has numerous sponsors, including some corporate ones such as Google.  Those tent poles don’t hoist themselves.

As Markos Moulitsas just informed Air America’s Sam Seder, who is sitting across from me, the inspiration for the creation of this space came from The Tank, which was a space set up by the masterminds behind the since created Living Liberally in New York City during the 2004 GOP convention.  It was a place where liberals could congregate, have a few drinks, and yell at the big screen whenever Republican speakers said something stupid.  It also featured live broadcasts from Air America, and was visited by guests such as David Cross and Janeane Garofalo.  Aside from being a great experience, it helped to spawn the Drinking Liberally empire.

Some of The Big Tent’s sponsors.

Air America’s Sam Seder.

It’s early morning on the first day of the convention, though the convention-related activities have been happening for a couple of days now.  Campaign finance laws prevent corporations from spending money to help elect candidates to federal office, but they don’t stop them from throwing parties.  The Blue Dog Democrats, those self-described fiscal conservatives, have found a loving partner in AT&T.  

Conference attendees generally begin conversations by trading notes on just what kind of convention access they have, if any, and how close (or far) their hotels iare from the Pepsi Center where most of the convention is being held.  A city the size of Denver just does not have nearly enough hotel rooms to support an event like this, so many find themselves having to commute in from places such as the Denver International Airport (26 miles) or Boulder (30 miles).  I learned my lesson during the 2004 convention in Boston, and made my hotel reservation for this event 13 months ago.

Politics is, as the saying goes, Hollywood for ugly people.   The conventions are their Oscars.  Every four years members of the media wring their hands about just why they cover these events.  The short answer is that they do so because it’s fun, and because this is where the important people are.  There may not be a lot of “news” going on here, but there are a lot of goings on nonetheless.  Who wants to be left out?

I’ll be here all week using this space to try to convey some sense of those parts of the convention and convention-related activities which aren’t parted of the scripted prime time show.  You can also follow along at my usual blog, and because blogs are so 4 years ago, at my twitter feed.