The utter absurdity of how we treat these political conventions
PHILADELPHIA (MarketWatch) — The floor of the Democratic convention is a lot like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange: We’d all like to believe it’s “the room where it happens,” when really it’s just the room in which we put our TV cameras.
The real market action no longer plays out on Wall Street but in server farms across the river in Jersey where computer algorithms moving money at light speed have all but displaced human traders. And how much political action is happening here in Philly? Well, speaking of events held in basketball arenas, the convention outcomes are about as suspenseful as a Harlem Globetrotters game.
We’ve had no shortage of news these past two weeks, but, except for some interesting color, pretty much none of it originated at the conventions.
nd yet hundreds of the country’s top TV, print and digital journalists are lured to the conventions, where they’re rounded up like Pokémon. There are so many reporters here that most of us get jammed into a Hooverville of media tents pitched in the parking lot. (Half of them, in fact, never make it into the arena at all, “covering” the convention by watching it on TV inside a tent.)
here are so many reporters here that it’s impossible to walk through the arena without running into someone’s microphone or live shot or Periscope stream — it’s like a fantasyland for indulging in every imaginable act of self-promotion.
And this is precisely why we cling to anachronistic rites like the trading and convention floors: Yes, it’s partly for the sake of tradition, but mostly it’s to bring an air of authenticity to what is essentially an orgy of punditry and spin.
The conventions, mind you, do offer great theater. The speeches can be moving, inspiring and sometimes even convincing. But why, every four years, do we pretend to be as obsessed with parsing the nuances of orations as they were in the age of Pericles? (In fairness, it’s no less ridiculous than our collective quadrennial obsession with the pommel horse or the butterfly stroke — but the stakes here are much higher than mere medals.)
The conventions provide each party a four-day television miniseries in which to make the case for their candidate. Putting them on is a massive expense, as is the effort by media organizations to cover them.
But is this the best use of the dwindling resources of media might? Wouldn’t we be better off if we all left the conventions to one or two TV networks and instead financially backed more substantive, important journalism? Wouldn’t we be better off if more business media outlets skipped the trading-floor TV studio and dug around where the real action is?
Don’t ask me. I’ve got to catch an Uber back to the Wells Fargo Center
PHILADELPHIA (MarketWatch) — The floor of the Democratic convention is a lot like the floor of the New York Stock Exchange: We’d all like to believe it’s “the room where it happens,” when really it’s just the room in which we put our TV cameras.
The real market action no longer plays out on Wall Street but in server farms across the river in Jersey where computer algorithms moving money at light speed have all but displaced human traders. And how much political action is happening here in Philly? Well, speaking of events held in basketball arenas, the convention outcomes are about as suspenseful as a Harlem Globetrotters game.
We’ve had no shortage of news these past two weeks, but, except for some interesting color, pretty much none of it originated at the conventions.
nd yet hundreds of the country’s top TV, print and digital journalists are lured to the conventions, where they’re rounded up like Pokémon. There are so many reporters here that most of us get jammed into a Hooverville of media tents pitched in the parking lot. (Half of them, in fact, never make it into the arena at all, “covering” the convention by watching it on TV inside a tent.)
here are so many reporters here that it’s impossible to walk through the arena without running into someone’s microphone or live shot or Periscope stream — it’s like a fantasyland for indulging in every imaginable act of self-promotion.
And this is precisely why we cling to anachronistic rites like the trading and convention floors: Yes, it’s partly for the sake of tradition, but mostly it’s to bring an air of authenticity to what is essentially an orgy of punditry and spin.
The conventions, mind you, do offer great theater. The speeches can be moving, inspiring and sometimes even convincing. But why, every four years, do we pretend to be as obsessed with parsing the nuances of orations as they were in the age of Pericles? (In fairness, it’s no less ridiculous than our collective quadrennial obsession with the pommel horse or the butterfly stroke — but the stakes here are much higher than mere medals.)
The conventions provide each party a four-day television miniseries in which to make the case for their candidate. Putting them on is a massive expense, as is the effort by media organizations to cover them.
But is this the best use of the dwindling resources of media might? Wouldn’t we be better off if we all left the conventions to one or two TV networks and instead financially backed more substantive, important journalism? Wouldn’t we be better off if more business media outlets skipped the trading-floor TV studio and dug around where the real action is?
Don’t ask me. I’ve got to catch an Uber back to the Wells Fargo Center
