Home cooking

Smart reporters use the backdrop of the national conventions to tell an essentially local story

by Dan Kennedy

LOS ANGELES - The time: about 10:30 a.m. on Tuesday. The place: 2 Rodeo Drive, a fancy outdoor mall amid La-La Land's famed shopping district. The stores: Pierre Deux, Judith Ripka, Gianni Versace, and Porche Design, where the window dressing includes a sharp-looking yellow bicycle with a price tag of $6500.

Standing on the fancy red brick sidewalk, waiting for a signal, is Jon Keller, political reporter for WLVI-TV (Channel 56). Cameraman Steve Carro motions that he's ready, and Keller strides toward the lens. "Here on Rodeo Drive and across America, these are prosperous times," Keller intones. "And I'll tell you how that might affect Massachusetts politics tonight in my live convention report for The 10 O'Clock News." The taped segment will be used as a promo later in day.

More than anything, the Democratic National Convention, like the Republican convention two weeks ago, is a media event. But while way too many of the more than 15,000 journalists here are telling pretty much the same story in pretty much the same way, there are also plenty of reporters, like Keller, who are using the national convention as a backdrop against which to tell an essentially local story.

As the New York Times recently reported, with network coverage being cut back and viewership down, it has fallen to local TV news operations to step in and fill the gap. And though there may be little public appetite for the staged action taking place inside the Staples Center, Boston's television stations - and, to a some extent, radio stations - are betting that viewers want to know what Massachusetts Democrats are up to in Los Angeles.

Look around the lobby of the Beverly Hilton, where the state's delegation is camping out in luxury, and you'll see such well-known figures as Channel 5's Chet Curtis, Channel 4's John Henning, Channel 7's Andy Hiller and Byron Barnett, and New England Cable News' Alison King and Mary Anne Marsh. For the electronic media, it can be a grueling pace. Whereas the Boston Globe has some 30 reporters, editors, photographers, and support staff here, the broadcast reporters are pretty much on their own. "I'm running all over the place," says WBZ Radio's Jay McQuaide after taping a commentary with Keller. "I'm trying to cover a national convention by myself, like a chicken with my head cut off."

By contrast with some of his colleagues in TV and radio, Keller has it relatively easy. His assignment is to produce one story a day, with a live shot for The 10 O'Clock News and a repackaging treatment for Channel 56's morning news show. "We are not the newscast of record," he says. "And for me that's tremendously liberating."

On Tuesday, he shows up at about 8:30 a.m., just in time for the Massachusetts delegation's breakfast. He's working on two pieces - a story on the Democratic candidates for governor, which will run later in the day, and a story previewing Al Gore's convention speech, which will run on Thursday.

First up is Carl Bernstein, the investigative-reporting legend who's now with Voter.com. Keller asks Bernstein to give Gore some advice on what he should say Thursday, but Bernstein responds that he's not in the business of giving advice. Apparently he's not in the business of promoting Voter.com, either. After a couple of minutes of banter, Keller lets Bernstein go. "Useless, totally useless," he mutters.

Next up is former state senator Warren Tolman, a likely gubernatorial candidate in 2002. Keller asks about a challenge laid down to Democrats by Governor Paul Cellucci - who's been in LA this week, shadowing the Democrats - to pledge not to raise taxes. Keller's notion is that in prosperous times (thus the set-up shots Keller would later do on Rodeo Drive), voters are more likely to agree with Bill Clinton, who in his Monday speech said meeting public needs should take precedence over tax cuts.

Tolman declines to take the Cellucci pledge, as does businessman Steve Grossman, who nevertheless says he intends to cut taxes if he's elected governor. Grossman is looking impossibly straitlaced in his pinstriped suit, and Keller can't resist needling him. "Was that you I saw stomping on a police car and giving the finger last night?" Keller asks, referring to the previous night's riot at a Rage Against the Machine concert. Grossman smiles wanly, and responds that he's always seen himself as something of an anarchist.

And on it goes. Former attorney general Scott Harshbarger, now the head of Common Cause, is his characteristically outgoing, semi-articulate self. Keller then gets in line to interview congressman and well-known camera hog Marty Meehan, who is otherwise engaged. Boston Herald gossip columnist Gayle Fee checks in, and Keller tells her about running into Cellucci the day before. "He's like the smallest man in LA," Keller jokes. "He's shrinking!" After talking with Meehan for a few moments, Keller grabs state treasurer Shannon O'Brien, who not only refuses to take the anti-tax pledge, but won't even answer a theoretical question about whether politicians in general should take such a pledge. Next, Boston mayor Tom Menino advises Gore to talk about "the basic needs of Americans, what they need - jobs, safe schools."

To be sure, it's not brain surgery, but Keller's method is a decent template for getting news out of a no-news convention. "If I may be presumptuous enough to criticize others, it's a big mistake when the local media come here and try to do a national story. It's not that they can't do it. But why bother?" says Keller. "To sort of lap up the spin and report it - I don't care whether you're local or national - is just pathetic."

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