MILWAUKEE — As I sit here at the Republican National Convention and think about conventions past and present, it's only natural to consider how each has influenced American politics.
Instead, as a journalist covering the 14th party convention (the 15th is the Democratic Convention in Chicago next month), I've been thinking a lot about the role of technology in determining how such events are covered.
Visually, the hall and floor are not all that different from the first I covered at the 1988 Atlanta Democratic Convention. Say what you want about political graphic design, but no convention has dared to stray from the traditional look in decades. The podium has a flashy backdrop that mixes red, white, and blue; balloons and confetti fly up as the presidential candidates finish their acceptance speeches; the giant press conference hall has the same blue curtains; there's a muted buzz of activity.
The physical structure of the convention is exactly the same: If you want to interview a delegate or member of Congress, you get a pass, clamber through the crowds lining the aisles, and make your way to your state using vertical signs that have looked the same for decades. Then you approach someone dressed in flashy attire and partisan finery and say, “Hello. Can I ask you a few questions for my article?”
But on the surface, the experience of being a convention reporter is very different from when I first started in the job.
In a good way.
While technology may not necessarily be beneficial in other areas, it has been our ally when covering political conventions.
During the first Democratic National Convention in 1988, about a year after I was sent off to a summer journalism class with my portable manual typewriter, I was working for a small photo news service called Consolidated News Pictures, run by the late Ernie Sachs and his sons Howard and Ron. Back then, film was black and white and had to be developed by hand in a mobile darkroom that my coworkers brought to the arena. My coworkers allowed me to take photos to share with clients, but my main job was literally taking the film back to the workshop to be developed, going through security checks and in and out all the time. We communicated by walkie-talkies.
Easily shareable color images were still in their infancy, as was the concept of digital photography. While covering the 1989 inauguration of President George H. W. Bush for Consolidated, I was amazed when a colleague told me that some of the images I had taken (taken remotely, perhaps with a TV remote control) had been scanned pixel by pixel and sent over phone lines to a client in Japan, where they were immediately published.
Then digital photography took over, and now I don't even use cameras, just my cell phone. I can now take a photo of a politician and send it instantly to social media with a speed that I would never have imagined in 1988. Using the same device, I can also send different photo options to my editor to use in a story.
I also worked for Consolidated during the 1992 Democratic National Convention in New York, and then had the good fortune of being hired as a reporter for National Journal magazine, where we published a daily newspaper for the temporary convention “community.” The National Journal Convention Daily's large staff went to both conventions and gathered all the news they could (the advertising revenue was phenomenal, and essentially supported the remainder of our publication for the next three-year cycle).
To do this, National Journal had to ship heavy desktop computers and monitors to its media hubs (San Diego for the Republicans, Chicago for the Democrats) in 1996. Advances in laptops made this logistical trick a bit easier by the time of the 2000 convention (though, sadly, I was only sent to the Republican convention in Philadelphia that cycle). For us Convention Daily reporters, it wasn't uncommon to send stories over payphones or by fax – concepts that younger people will never experience (and good for them).
Mobile phones would eventually replace walkie-talkies and pay phones, but even the first generation of mobile phones were primitive compared to today's models, as they were primarily used for making calls rather than for searching the web or taking photos or videos.
I remember using phone earbuds (wired) for the first time during the Democratic Convention in Boston in 2004. I remember sitting in the press box inside the arena during the Republican Convention in Minneapolis in 2008 and being able to submit articles for my now-defunct publication, CongressNow, using the wonders of Wi-Fi. Now it's commonplace. (Kudos to the organizers of this year's Milwaukee convention; the Wi-Fi in Fiserv Forum and associated buildings is fantastic.)
Today, social media makes it easy to shoot and upload video (a task that once required an analog video camera) and share it instantly with the world. In 2016, when supporters of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders stormed the Florida Democratic Delegate Breakfast in Philadelphia to protest Florida Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz's handling of the candidate's demands, I was able to take photo after photo, upload them to Twitter in real time and share them with editors at the Tampa Bay Times.
The impressive advancements in convention-related technology aren't limited to personal communications devices: I first used Airbnb at the 2008 Republican Convention, and again at both conventions in 2016. By 2016, Uber had become a much better option than frustratingly trying to hail a cab after a late-night convention session (or a boozy after-hours party).
So a lot has changed. But thankfully, despite years of news cuts and the growing trend towards remote work, each convention gives me the opportunity to reconnect with old journalistic colleagues I haven't seen since the convention four years ago.
Remember Ron Sachs, who I first worked with at the 1988 convention? I met him by chance on a plane to Milwaukee. I said, “I know where you're going,” and he said, “I know where you're going,” and as I was scouting the facility the night before the convention, I made sure to seek him out in the state-of-the-art digital darkroom behind the podium.
Author speaking with Ron Sachs at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee on July 14, 2024. (Louis Jacobson/Poynter)
PolitiFact Chief Correspondent Louise Jacobson is covering this year's Democratic and Republican conventions for PolitiFact and its partners, the Tampa Bay Times and the Dallas Morning News.
