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Thursday, August 30, 2012

The Newbie: Electronic Connection Fails; Personal Connections Succeed

Tracie Mauriello by Tracie Mauriello 0 comments

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reporter Tracie Mauriello is covering her first political convention. She shares her ups and downs with NPF Newsbag readers.

This reporter’s-eye-view blog isn’t such an original idea after all. Melissa Griffin of the San Francisco Examiner is blogging from Tampa this week, too. I’m enjoying her posts and recommend that you check them out.  I’m happy to say that I haven’t had any horrible no good very bad days like she did on Monday.

Still, I did have a bit of angst this morning when I couldn’t get my laptop to connect to the Internet, especially when I had all kinds of contingency plans. (Plan A: my netbook's built-in broadband. Plan B: my MiFi. Plan C: a convention wireless line that some regional reporters chipped in to buy.) So, I was prepared for the wireless networks to jam and fail, but not for my actual problem: a computer failure.

So, instead of working on this story about the religious vote, I spent the morning on the phone with three different information technology specialists. The good news is that, in the end, they solved my problem.
I had planned to go to a panel discussion in another part of Tampa, but I ran out of time. Fortunately, I was able to watch it via webcast. I’ll be using material from that panel in a story I’m expecting to write from Charlotte next week.
 
At 4 p.m. I hopped on a conference call, hoping to hear Condoleezza Rice provide a preview of her floor speech, but she was tied up and never got on the line.
 
I headed to the convention center. Instead of going to the press stands, I bought a sandwich and sat at a table, which turned out to be a pretty smart move. Delegates were coming and going and I got to meet some great people, including the attorney general of Colorado and several delegates from Oklahoma. One turned out to be a church secretary whose comments on politics and religion added a lot to my story. (I love it when a perfect source appears at the perfect moment!)  Several of the delegates were quite chatty, which would have been great, except that I was rushing to file before the evening speeches.
I returned to the press stands to finish the religion piece and had a little downtime while I waited for John McCain, Condoleezza Rice and Paul Ryan to speak. I quickly filed web stories for each and then settled in to wait for my colleague (and chauffeur) to finish his lead-all for the papers.
 

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