A Tale of Two Conventions

By Stephen Smith

How a newspaperman and a TV reporter covered the Democrats

He moved unobtrusively in the choked aisles on the floor of the Democratic Convention, greeting state party leaders by their first names, bantering easily with old friends, picking up nuggets of political information along the way. Having covered countless primaries in three campaigns, Curtis Wilkie of the Boston Globe seemed to have sources in every cranny of Madison Square Garden. After an hour he slipped quietly off the floor to write an authoritative story about how President Carter's operatives were pressuring wavering delegates. It was old-style political reporting at its best.

Ed Bradley of CBS was also canvassing delegations, but there was nothing unobtrusive about it. More famous than all but a handful of the Democrats on the floor, Bradley was slowed by autograph seekers and fans asking him to pose for photographs. Like Wilkie, he had to develop solid sources to stay on top of convention developments. He also needed interview subjects who would go on camera with timely information. It was new-style political reporting at its most trying.

Reporters like Wilkie and Bradley are part of an elite corps of journalists, drawn mostly from large newspapers, newsmagazines and the networks, who dominate coverage of such major national events as the conventions. The clout of their employers gives them access unheard of among most regional newspapers and television stations--and hence an influence that far transcends their numbers.

Though both work for major news organizations, Wilkie and Bradley were, in a sense, covering two different conventions. Wilkie's was the time-honored affair of party bosses in smoke-filled rooms, cutting behind-the-scenes deals. Bradley's was the modern, made-for-television extravaganza of briefly glimpsed public events and quickly forgotten stand-up interviews. Neither the Globe nor CBS gave --or claimed to give--a complete picture. The newspaper preferred analysis and backstage maneuvering to the podium play-by-play. As for TV's supposedly all-seeing eye, it focused on the exuberant demonstrations after Senator Kennedy's rousing Tuesday speech; actually a large portion--perhaps most--of the delegates were not involved in the display at all.

With press representatives outnumbering delegates by more than 3 to 1 (11,500 press credentials were issued for the event), it was sometimes difficult to figure out who was convening. President Carter's renomination was a fairly humdrum story, yet the networks deployed 2,000 staffers and spent $30 million in pursuit of respectable ratings. By comparison, the Democratic National Committee was given only $4 million to conduct the entire four-day affair.

Wilkie, 39, is an affable Mississippian with an accent that sounds like marbles rolling around in a pail of Delta mud. A drooping mustache and gray-streaked hair that tumbles over his collar contribute to an aspect somewhere between a Confederate cavalry officer and Catfish Hunter. He began his career with the Clarksdale (Miss.) Press Register (circ. 7,325), got his first taste of national politics--and a highly flattering portrayal in The Boys on the Bus, Timothy Grouse's book about the 1972 campaign--at the Wilmington (Del.) News Journal (circ. 133,000) and hired on at the Globe (490,000) in 1975. After chronicling Jimmy Carter's 1976 campaign, Wilkie became the paper's White House correspondent.

One of eight Globe writers in New York last week, Wilkie was again assigned to the Carter beat. From the start his main interest was whether Kennedy would appear on the podium with the renominated President. He even wagered a dinner with Richard Moe, chief of staff for Vice President Mondale, that Kennedy would forgo this traditional expression of unity. "I'm sure he's not going to do it," said Wilkie the day the convention got under way. "But not sure enough to write it."

Every morning, Wilkie arrived at Carter convention headquarters in midtown Manhattan in search of political dope. Cabinet officers were practically begging to be interviewed, but Wilkie and most experienced Washington hands studiously ignored them, figuring they knew less than the press did. Many reporters dutifully attended formal briefings on the platform planks, but with little enthusiasm. After a session with Stuart Eizenstat, Carter's chief domestic adviser, one reporter was left behind snoozing in his chair.

With real news in short supply, newsmen interviewed each other. One morning Wilkie found himself surrounded by eight reporters, including representatives of the New York Times, Washington Post and Los Angeles Times, all picking his brain about the platform compromises the night before. On another occasion a TV crew spotted him briefing colleagues and thought he was a Carter aide. "No lights! No pictures!" shouted the mortified Wilkie as the cameramen descended.

After lunch he would mosey over to the Carter trailers inside Madison Square Garden. Comments from presidential aides were often cryptic, but Wilkie usually managed to get a sense of how Carter's men were faring against their foe from Massachusetts. By 9 p.m. or so, he would file for the Globe's first edition, then do some additional reporting and update his stories if necessary. After that it was off to a saloon on 33rd Street for some Jack Daniel's on the rocks.

On the evening of Carter's renomination, Wilkie produced a carefully crafted 1,000-word analysis of the cultural and political gulf between Carter and Kennedy. He finished that at 7 p.m., cracked open a beer and ten minutes later started writing background material for the lead story. Except for a brief sortie to the hall, Wilkie remained at the typewriter for the next seven hours, revising his stories for the paper's three morning and two afternoon editions. All told he turned out more than 3,000 words, the equivalent of a full-length magazine article.

Shortly after 11 the next morning, Globe Reporter Thomas Oliphant phoned in the news that Kennedy would indeed appear on the podium. Wilkie wrote a new lead for the afternoon edition, then left a message for Dick Moe. It read: "How 'bout Dominique's [a French restaurant near the White House]?" Like any seasoned political reporter, Wilkie was philosophic about his batting average. "We're like Mark Belanger [the Baltimore Orioles' sure-handed shortstop]," he said. "Good field, no hit."

For Ed Bradley, also 39, the convention was especially traumatic and exhausting. His mother suffered a stroke the week before, and for a time he wondered whether he should bow out. "On Sunday night I couldn't even write a 30-second spot," he said. "But I thought to myself, if she sees me up there, she is going to get a charge out of it." CBS provided a limousine so he could visit his mother each day in Philadelphia, 90 miles away.

Bradley began his broadcast career as a radio disc jockey and became a full-time correspondent for CBS in 1973. He covered the fall of Cambodia and Viet Nam in 1975 and was named White House correspondent in 1976. Two years later he joined CBS Reports, where two of his stories won Emmys. Next year he will begin as a correspondent on the top-rated 60 Minutes.

Bradley arrived as early as 3 p.m. in the CBS "ready room" to have his face made up. His special equipment: a battery pack around the waist, a headset and a pair of steel-toed combat boots. "After being stepped on once too often during the Republican Convention, I decided I'd wear these to this one." Every day he had several story ideas ready before the live broadcast began. Once one of them was aired he would begin improvising. "Everything," he said, "is happening right now." He added with a grin: "If there's no drama, I'll turn to human interest--like the 26-year-old woman who has five kids and never had time for a honeymoon so she opted to come to the convention as her honeymoon."

Bradley had mixed results as a matchmaker. Tuesday night a Kennedy supporter who had worked two years for Carter refused to be interviewed. "That was the biggest disappointment for me tonight," Bradley said. "He wasn't a name, but he is the kind of person Carter needs if this whole thing is going to come together." Another time, Bradley arranged a potentially combustible joint interview with two feuding delegates from Maryland; on camera they were all sweetness.

Being a television floor correspondent is physically taxing. Bradley and many of his colleagues thought of this somewhat resentfully as they wilted in the steamy crush of delegates. Late one evening, he gazed into the bleachers and spotted a magazine reporter asleep in her seat.

That, he mused, was an odd way to "get a feeling for what's going on down here." Moments later, he revived himself with a reporter's usual tonic--a good story. He gave this account of a close Pennsylvania vote: "What happened was the leadership decided that it needed to change four votes to make the President look a little better. So they just changed them."

For all their long hours, Wilkie and Bradley fared much better than less celebrated colleagues. While the little-shots settled for free beer and sandwiches at a press lounge funded by the railroad industry lobby, the Globe contingent was enjoying a final $300 expense account lunch at Luchow's (chosen because it was a favorite hangout of Convention Chronicler H.L. Mencken).

The caste system was most evident in access to news sources. While reporters from small news organizations were watching the action on television sets in the railroad lounge, White House "regulars" were able to get private telephone numbers and appointments. One day at the Carter press center, aides quietly told the regulars that Jody Powell was about to have a briefing in the back room. About 50 people drifted in--but at least that many sat in the front room completely oblivious. Said Wilkie: "It's not the individual, it's the institution that counts--the newspaper or TV network you're with. There are some terrific reporters from small papers, but if they want to cover this thing, they can't get the access they need because nobody's heard of them."

In the end, though, the news is often so predictable or so trivial that the smaller news organizations are not terribly aggrieved. Says Don Hewitt, a floor producer for CBS: "Ninety percent of it is hot air, and 10% is news." If that. Perhaps the most valiant effort to make it all sound absorbing was made by CBS Correspondent Harry Reasoner, who observed at the end of a particularly dreary night: "After a while, the fact that you have no surprises gets rather dramatic."

At convention's close, several hundred delegates and hangers-on gathered below the CBS booth chanting "Walter! Walter! Walter!" It was Cronkite's last stint as a convention anchor, and the crowd was giving him a rousing salute. At a CBS party a few hours later, colleagues presented him with a 1952-vintage microphone that plays a tape of Walter broadcasting his first convention, the Democrats' get-together that year in Chicago. But Cronkite seemed in no hurry to go: he said he would be back in some capacity in 1984. After all, even if many conventions offer only pseudo news, there is something about them that sets a reporter's blood stirring. Said Wilkie: "I'm jaded about going to the White House and seeing the President. I think those press conferences stink. But I really get up for these things."

--By Stephen Smith. Reported by Mary Cronin and Elizabeth Rudolph/New York

With reporting by Mary Cronin, Elizabeth Rudulph/New York

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