The Press: The Media Mob

"There's only news enough for 1,500 of us," complained Washington Post Columnist Nicholas von Hoffman from Miami Beach last week, "but we are here 8,000 strong. We saturate this convention; nothing and nobody is safe from our starved searching for angles, oddities and inconsequential exclusives." Actually, Von Hoffman underestimated. More than 10,000 people had passes stamped MEDIA hung around their necks at a Democratic Convention that proved to be largely devoid of overt drama, and a sense of editorial overkill was inevitable.

Crammed into curtained cubbyholes off the convention floor or within the makeshift press headquarters in the garage of the Fontainebleau Hotel, correspondents filed well over a million words a day—250,000 alone by the Associated Press staff of 200. Besides the reporters from U.S. dailies, reporters descended on Miami Beach from 64 foreign countries, including nine from the Soviet Union; all manner of underground publications, from Rolling Stone to the Berkeley Barb; and 206 college papers, some with copy deadlines as distant as the start of the fall term.

Fresh Faces. The media mob included Feminist Germaine Greer (who quickly characterized the convention as "a crock of s—") as well as an "alternative audio collective" called Unicorn Press, which provided spots for some 30 rock radio stations. Yippie Leader Jerry Rubin and his colleague Abbie Hoffman were accredited for the purpose of writing a book about the convention, but they waggishly passed themselves off as correspondents for, respectively. Mad magazine and Popular Mechanics. Politicians who had been excluded from the convention floor by party reform, like Los Angeles Mayor Sam Yorty and California Congressman Jess Unruh, showed up as correspondents for West Coast radio stations.

Since 80% of the delegates were first-timers, some veteran political reporters found themselves bereft of old-line power-broker sources. "I've been covering these things for 20 years," complained Columnist Robert Novak, "and I don't know a soul here." But Novak and others had only to look away from the sea of fresh faces on the floor to find old hands like Frank Mankiewicz, Pierre Salinger and Richard Dougherty at McGovern headquarters, eager to brief newsmen on plans and tactics. "This convention's easier to cover," maintained Thomas Ross of the Chicago Sun-Times, "because there aren't as many double-dealers among the delegates. At other conventions, you'd think you had it cold and then three guys would go into a hotel room and turn it all around on you."