[109241] in Cypherpunks
The "ascendance" of a Cypherjournalist...
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Robert Hettinga)
Sun Mar 14 20:28:57 1999
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 16:48:18 -0500
To: cypherpunks@cyberpass.net
From: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
Reply-To: Robert Hettinga <rah@shipwright.com>
"Tight pool", indeed...
Cheers,
RAH
--- begin forwarded text
Date: Sun, 14 Mar 1999 15:45:32 -0500
To: politech@vorlon.mit.edu
From: Declan McCullagh <declan@well.com>
Subject: FC: Confessions of an email addict (or, Clinton's trip home)
Sender: owner-politech@vorlon.mit.edu
Reply-To: declan@well.com
Apologies if you've tried to reach me and I haven't responded. I was
unexpectedly called away to cover the president's three-day trip to Texas
and Arkansas.
I did have my laptop with me and could have logged in, but when you're in
the "tight pool" and stay with the president constantly, by the time you
get to bed you're exhausted. (Even Air Force One, which has direct
connections to the White House switchboard we can use, does not yet have
Ethernet hookups at each reporter's seat.)
The so-called tight pool was created because the number of reporters who
want to cover the president is larger than the number who can reasonably do
so. The 30-car motorcade -- one van just to carry POTUS luggage -- is
already too awkward. (In one trip to Aspen I covered, our motorcade split
in two when one driver got lost.) And even a plane as large as AF1 only has
a small number of seats reserved for the press.
The compromise: Reporters from national publications travel with POTUS at
all times, as long as they share their reports with their colleagues.
So when Clinton went to a Little Rock fundraiser last night (raised
$200,000 for the DNC, held in the living room of an executive at Entergy
Inc.) I was the only such reporter in the room. When I left I phoned in my
report for the rest of the press corps to use.
This trip was more tiring than usual. Part of the problem was that Clinton
was back home and seemed to know everyone. By around midnight last night,
the tight pool was so exhausted that we gave Clinton an unprecedented
standing ovation when he finally decided to leave one fundraising gathering
-- just 90 minutes behind schedule. At one point he asked if the press
corps would be upset that we weren't staying in Little Rock another night
(as was scheduled until rain cancelled golf plans). Huh? That, we decided,
was the mark of a president who was deeply out of touch with reality.
It's interesting to note that to the traveling press corps, policy and even
politics are much less important than personal behavior. Clinton is
well-known as being much less considerate of everyone he travels with than
Bush or Gore have been. He routinely keeps visiting dignitaries waiting in
the rain outside AF1, for instance, instead of getting out as soon as it
lands.
-Declan
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-----------------
Robert A. Hettinga <mailto: rah@philodox.com>
Philodox Financial Technology Evangelism <http://www.philodox.com/>
44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA
"... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity,
[predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to
experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'
