GOP 2004: Security is 'Peachy' at Convention Site

By: Joe Strupp With the Republican National Convention now underway, the 15,000 credentialed journalists in town seem to agree on two things: the security is tighter than at the Democratic convention in Boston, but the working conditions are better.

"We were in a tent in a subway tunnel at the Fleet Center," Mark Edgar, assistant managing editor at The Dallas Morning News (Click for QuikCap), recalled about his Boston experience.

But Edgar, who spoke in the Morning News' basement convention bureau inside the former post office across the street from Madison Square Garden that serves as the convention's press center, said getting into the building can be tedious. "We had staff who were not able to bring in fruit," he said, citing an employee who had to open up a peach to satisfy a security guard that it was not dangerous. "It was deemed a projectile.

"But at least America is now safe from fruit."

Umbrellas, no matter how small, were regularly seized. Still, most of those who spoke with E&P as they picked up media credentials, began writing stories, and planned out coverage for the week, were satisfied overall, so far, that the experience was going as well as possible.

"The city is organized," said Mark Barabak, a veteran political reporter for the Los Angeles Times, who has covered every convention since 1984 and discussed the situation while working in the Tribune Co. filing center. "Security is not oppressive. They are well-organized and restrictive, but it is sufficient."

Getting into the mammoth press center, which spans three floors and an entire city block, can take some doing. A single press credential is needed to get into the area around the media center, with a second required to get into the building, and a third to get into the "bowl" of the Garden when the convention sessions take place. In addition, a different version of each pass is needed for each of the four days of the convention. In all, that means most members of the press must obtain 10 or more different passes, in addition to showing their own photo I.D.

Most of those on the job were not complaining.

"Everybody's been really good to us," said Allan Detrich, a photographer with The Blade of Toledo, Ohio, who spoke while covering the large protest march Sunday afternoon that attracted hundreds of thousands. "[The police] talk to you nicely and treat you well."

Detrich, who covered both the 2000 Democratic convention in Los Angeles and the GOP gathering in Philadelphia that same year, as well as the 2004 Boston convention, said the New York event has been much more orderly for the press. "Philly was pretty bad. When things started happening [in the streets], they just grabbed everyone," he said, while hustling to get ahead of the marchers along 34th Street. "In L.A., you got pushed around and shoved around. I got hit in the head with a club."

Debbie Egan, a New York Daily News photog who also covered the Boston convention, offered similar views. "In Boston, the police were more intimidating," she said. "They had on riot gear."