Inside the Media Tent at the Democratic National Convention

A peek into the press headquarters.

 

This article is part of an ongoing series written by University of Delaware journalism students as they cover the 2016 Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. Follow along on Twitter using the hashtag #UDatDNC


Welcome to the media tent, where reporters hide behind black curtains, schmooze with Google and nest with Twitter.

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The three circus-like tents house reporters, editors, bloggers and social media mavens. If you paid for the space, you got it, blue carpet and all.

In tent two, Molly Eichel, assistant features editor at the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Michael Gold, the social media editor at the New York Times, joke with each other, while the reporters at Real Clear Politics bury their heads in their computers. 

Eric Devlin, with Digital First Media, paces back and forth in front of the Medium set-up, typing hastily into his phone. Despite Comcast’s much-vaunted “hotspots,” some reporters have been experiencing issues.

“We’re just setting our laptops up along the tables here,” Devlin says. “The internet has kind of been wonky, to say the least. But everything is written on Microsoft Word, and when we have a good signal, we email everything to our editor.”

Eichel said that she wouldn’t be attending any parties Monday evening, as she had to work until 2 a.m. She was, however, able to use her Philadelphia connections to score a noteworthy interview.

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“I just talked to Scott Pelley from CBS News, and his executive producer, who is kind of the guy behind the scenes who runs everything, who also happens to be from Philadelphia,” Eichel says. “He said some pretty hilarious things—like, he hasn’t seen a bloodbath like this since the last Flyers game he went to.”

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