Alyssa at the RNC Blog

My runner duties were about the same the last two days: running floor passes to CBS affiliate stations who are in talk show row, running down to the CBS workspace to make copies or grab the schedule of speeches for the night, answering the phone, checking in with affiliate, etc. Basically any random tasks that the crew at CBS Radio needs the runners do. There is a lot of downtime in the morning and afternoons (when the major speeches aren't happening), but it gets very busy in the evenings.

Wednesday night was hectic. Security triples when the convention events start to rev up. The day before and after the convention one only had to show your pre/post convention credential and did not have to put your stuff through one of those x-ray machines that allows security guards to see into your bags, or pass through metal detectors. But once the convention actually started, one had to go through several "layers" of security. If you brought in a bottle of water, you had to take a sip before they let you through to make sure the water wasn't poisoned. You could not even bring in apples of oranges because they could be used as projectiles.

The last two days I did not "meet" any politicians or celebrities, but I did see Samantha Bee of the Daily Show twice and Jason Jones once. Needless to say I was excited and hoped they would use me in a segment or something, but that was of course a long shot. I wanted to take some pictures of them, but did not want to ruin it for the crew and become one of the gawkers that were already standing around the correspondents.

I did take some pics of the speakers and will attempt to post them here. I am not going to comment on the speeches because I want to keep my opinions private, but will say that the anticipation of the major speakers did get me excited. However, I was ticked off when they blocked the elevators Wednesday night for a period of time in order to transport the Palin family to the arena floor. I was caught on the first floor and needed to get to the top floor (the press level) right away, so I climbed and climbed almost ten flights of stairs. I swore I would never do it again, but found my self doing it a short time later when they closed down the elevators again in order to transport John McCain. I was on the first floor again when this happened and found myself climbing the flights of stairs I swore would never do again. The thing that irked me the most was that on every few steps were advertisements for BlueCross Blue Shield's do pr campaign. Needless to say swore under my breath at the reminder to doClimb every fews steps as my calves were aching and I still had several flights of steps to go.

The convention was a blast and the people who I worked with were the best. The CBS Radio engineers were hilarious and always fun to hang around. I will never forget the people and this experience and look forward to going to more presidential conventions as a journalist.