The conventions

Covering the political conventions at the age of 19 meant camping out in the thinly-carpeted broadcast section of the news pit at Madison Square Garden. It meant hearing Sean Hannity bellow out condemnations that somehow rose above the din of talk radio hosts doing constant live interviews from both major political persuasions. In Boston, we arrived to the basement of the Fleet Center before the sun had risen and spent the day tottering on high heels, living on complementary Dunkin Donuts coffee and McDonald's fries while racing to find politicians who'd be willing to sit down with a not-so-famous radio talk show host, to talk about whatever.

I was credentialed as an intern with the Georgetown-based Talk Radio News, and wrote about my experiences for the Web site of National Public Radio. I received funding from the human rights department of my school, Bard College. There were people like me, who worked on their college papers, who wanted to be journalists. There were also relatives of journalists and politicos, who were gifted a media pass to the convention as a proper learning experience and a good dose of political fun. Apparently the so-called political-blogger "wunderkind" Ezra Klein was there, too. If he was, I didn't notice. I interviewed Chuck Schumer, Andre 3000 and Barack Obama, among dozens of others, over those two weeks in two American cities. It was the second time I had the privilege to interview Obama; I spotted the keynote speaker and Illinois Senator standing alone in the basement of the Fleet Center midweek of the 2004 Democratic National Convention. The buzz of hundreds of Washington acolytes -- reporters, would-be reporters, aides, politicians, delegates, celebrities -- did not yet know him. After our brief talk for college radio, I watched him timidly enter the fray, covering people's hands with his long fingers as he greeted them with a toothy smile.