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."

But for all its relative openness, the convention generally received coverage that was more routine than inspired. The Washington Post offered its usual thorough coverage, bolstered with some particularly perceptive reporting. The Post's Haynes Johnson, for example, had the best explanation of McGovern's South Carolina strategy. New York Times readers got their expected ration of comprehensive journalism. Column after column catalogued the convention in infinite detail--even to an uncharacteristically droll bit by Robert Semple on the confrontation between a Secret Service bent on X-raying delegates' boxes of fried chicken for possible bombs and a Department of Public Health fearful that X rays would damage both dinner and diner.

The Knight chain's Miami Herald, using color photos and an airy makeup, had the most effective presentation, mixing solid analytical pieces by Knight specialists with such fascinating fluff as the revelation that Walter Cronkite lines up his navel with an arrow on his desk in order to center himself for CBS cameras. Knight showed enterprise as well: Washington Correspondent Vera Glaser cracked a secret women's caucus with a concealed tape recorder, and her colleague Clark Hoyt had the first story on how anti-McGovern forces were conspiring to support local candidates in November instead of the national ticket. Several papers used breastpocket "beepers" to maintain contact with their reporters, but the technique backfired on the Los Angeles Times: one of its men was ejected from a closed black caucus when his beeper went off, blowing his cover as a delegate.

As at every recent national convention, literary superstars were on hand to gather impressions, mostly for publication later in magazines. Norman Mailer refused to tell anyone what he thought of the proceedings for fear of compromising a forthcoming article in LIFE. Novelist William Styron and Playwright Arthur Miller, on assignment from Esquire, agreed that Miami Beach '72 would be harder to write about than Chicago '68, which Styron covered for the New York Review of Books and Miller attended as a delegate. Also observing for Esquire were Soviet Journalist Guenrikh Borovik, who felt "the world does not need this much coverage," and Jack Chen, former writer for Peking's People's Daily, who sketched quietly in the Convention Hall gallery and noted: "The young people are very impressive. It is a good and beautiful America that they want."

Novelist Irving Wallace plunged into daily journalism for the Chicago Sun-Times with a cub reporter's drive and determination. From interviews with intimates of Lyndon Johnson in Miami Beach, Wallace pieced together an effective word picture of the ex-President sulking at home last week: "He's got three color television sets going at the same time, and he's watching an alien political party that still bears the name of the party he loved go about nominating as its presidential candidate a man he detests with passion."

After McGovern's nomination was assured and the protesters in Flamingo

Park proved to be relatively passive, the only suspense involved a running mate. The spate of speculations on who would best balance the ticket led Peter Lisagor of the Chicago Daily News to the mock conclusion: "George McGovern must find a black Jew who has turned Catholic, lives in the South, belongs to the United Steelworkers Union--and is engaged to Gloria Steinem." But such flashes of humor were infrequent. The event may have lacked what one old hand called "the electricity you expect from these things," but in more fundamental ways it was a most unconventional convention, and too many in the media mob missed that point.

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