Oh, the indignities heaped on the press in Charlotte

Gawker blogger John Cook  is not a happy camper. Bad rooms, bad views. As an Important Person, he is mightily offended: “I, for one, am not accustomed to sleeping in a room with mottled, smoke-damaged carpets and a skimpy lock that has clearly been jimmied dozens of times ... Our seats in the Time Warner Cable Arena are terrible! All we can see from our press perch is the outline of the speakers from the rear, obscured by a giant backdrop. … I simply can’t believe the Democratic Party would treat us this way. No American should have to live like this. Especially not credentialed press.” …

Politico’s Mike Allen is known as one intensely-driven journalist. Apparently, he always was. His first editor, at the college paper at Washington and Lee University, was John Cleghorn, minister at Charlotte’s Caldwell Memorial Presbyterian Church. “His energy, smarts and curiosity were in clear evidence then covering student government. Even then we wondered if he ever slept.” …
Sisters Margot and Scarlett Francini  of Mooresville are the youngest journalists at the DNC – they’re 9 and 7 respectively. They’ve been covering the convention for their Girl Scout troop blog, gs805.org. Among their interviews: U.S. Sen. Ben Cardin of Maryland and Obama campaign manager Jim Messina. Huffington Post was interested in them for an item, as was PBS. “Everyone just loves Girl Scouts, so we’ve gotten a lot of high fives in the streets,” says proud mom Laura Francini. … Scott Pelley will broadcast the "CBS Evening News" from the temporary rooftop studio at WBTV (Channel 3) that overlooks uptown. ...

CNN Washington bureau chief Sam Feist says it’s impossible to estimate how much the network spent setting up its remote studio in Bank of America Stadium for the canceled Thursday event, but he wasn’t sorry because tons of equipment still would have needed to be moved from the arena to the stadium. “There’s something about the 2012 conventions that just seemed to attract bad weather. But ironically, storm clouds came to both conventions.” …

NBC correspondent Tom Brokaw was taken to a hospital Thursday morning after he felt lightheaded. He said he had mistakenly taken a sleeping pill. “All is well,” tweeted Brokaw, 72. “Early AM I mistakenly took a half dose of Ambien and made less sense than usual. Made a better comeback than Giants.” …

WBTV (Channel 3) reporter Steve Crump’s decades of local experience pay off again. He was alone among local media in noting the irony of Michelle Obama giving a speech to the DNC in Charlotte 55 years to the day that Dorothy Counts was spat upon when integrating Harding High School.

Media Lite

David Letterman on Michelle Obama’s speech: “It was powerful. It was exhilarating. It was thrilling. It was motivating. And at the end of the speech, I thought, ‘Whoa boy, she could do much better than him.’”


Political shift

Do networks with a particular political perspective attract partisans for major political events?

You be the judge.

On the night of Ann Romney’s speech at the Republican National Convention, Fox News Channel had more viewers than even any of the Big 3 networks. Left-leaning MSNBC came in last.
A week later, for Michelle Obama’s address to the Democratic National Convention, MSNBC was the second highest-rated network. Fox was last.

Here are the top performing networks covering the RNC, 10-11 p.m. Aug. 28.

Network Viewers
1. Fox 6,879,000
2. NBC 4,770,000
3. CBS 3,119,000
4. ABC 2,863,000
5. CNN 1,474,000
6. MSNBC 1,468,000

Here are the top performing networks covering the DNC, 10-11 p.m. Sept. 4.

Network Viewers
1. NBC 5,022,000
2. MSNBC 4,107,000
3. CNN 3,888,000
4. ABC 3,237,000
5. CBS 3,269,000
6. Fox 2,398,000
Source: Nielsen