Palin's appearance draws international coverage

Journalists Silke Bock from TV2 and Peter Hove, photographer for Politiken, came from Copenhagen, Denmark. Maja Surina hailed from Zagreb, Croatia. Antony Botto, from U.S. State Department, hosted six people from Angola Public Television while they filmed a documentary on the U.S. electoral process. Portugal-based journalist Joao Paulo Baltazar, en route up the Mississippi River on an unrelated story, made time to attend Thursday's campaign rally featuring vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, as did two National Public Radio journalists.

They were among the nearly 50 journalists who covered Palin's appearance. She traveled with nearly a dozen more.

Palin's embedded journalists arrived and departed as part of the campaign motorcade and were seated in a group, for efficiency and security. They were moved swiftly through the crowd and did not undergo security checks.

Jo Mannies of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, who drove to the event, said campaign coverage has changed radically over the last 25 years. She recalls traveling with Ronald Reagan's campaign in jammed press buses. These days, she said, longer campaigns, limited candidate access and tight newsroom budgets have reduced reporters' abilities to travel with candidates.

"You have to think realistically, what is the best use of our resources, of our time, and what best serves the readers?" she said.

Many reporters at Palin's visit said they are now only able to devote a fraction of time to covering national political campaigns, catching up for a specific event or a few days on the road.

Palin's press entourage was a combination of offline TV producers -- ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and FOX -- and reporters ranging from online startup Washington Independent, which sent Ana Marie Cox, to Washington Post reporter Juliet Eilperin and a Reuters reporter who declined to give her name. Most members of the national media declined to be interviewed on the record, either because doing so is forbidden by an employer or simply to avoid voicing opinions. Several said the disdain for the media Palin publicly proclaims is felt by the traveling press corps. The reporters said they strove to be fair.

Cox spent much of the last 18 months traveling with McCain. She'd joined Palin's media entourage three days earlier; Eil¿perin has followed Palin "off and on since the convention," though she more often travels with the McCain crew.

Experienced reporters said some aspects of campaigns never change: the staging of signs and handmade posters; the energy of any party's rhetoric, especially this close to Election Day, being aimed at keeping voters motivated enough to actually cast the crucial ballots.

The reporters were corralled into a central main floor position, behind a VIP area, with risers for cameras, tables, chairs, electric connections and wireless access provided by the McCain campaign.

Many reporters operated despite a lack of sleep.

Two University of Missouri students, Ashley Reynolds, 23, and Margaret Enright, 21, both seniors and broadcast majors, stayed up most of the night after finding a hotel room in Jackson. Michele Longworth, a reporter for the Metropolis, Ill., Planet, slept through her early morning alarm but made it to the Show Me Center with plenty of time to spare. Faune Riggin, program director for KZIM-AM, started her usual morning show before rushing to the Palin event.

Some reporters arrived with stars in their eyes.

"To me it was an honor to be part of a historic event," said Michael Stephens, news anchor at KAPE Radio 1550. Others, like Missouri-based Associated Press reporter Jim Salter, were neutral. He observed that Thursday's crowd didn't "seem at all deterred by the polls.

"What strikes me here is their enthusiasm," he said.

pmcnichol@semissourian.com

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