I wonder if the competence with which the conventions are run correlates with the competence of the campaigns that are going to be run. I just found out today that BNN won’t be credentialed for the Republican National Convention; just finding this out was a hassle, since they never actually responded to our request the first time and had to be prompted three times to get us a damn answer. Yeah, guys, wait until the last minute. It’s not like your convention is in another state, or that we’d need to make arrangements in advance.

The Democrats, by comparison, were downright solicitous of blogs in general and us in particular. They invited all the bloggers to the press walkthrough of the convention facility months ago, long before they even had a credentialing process in place. They set up a multiply tiered system of credentials to get the largest possible number of bloggers through the doors. After we got our application in, they promptly let us know they received it, and they got us an answer quickly. I don’t recall exactly when we applied - it was around the same time for both conventions - but the Democrats advised us we were credentialed on May 29 - that’s more than two months ago, Republican National Guild of Procrastinators - giving us plenty of time to arrange housing, travel, and make other plans. They also set up, in conjunction with some big liberal blogs, a blog working zone outside the convention center for those bloggers who didn’t get credentialed but who want to cover the convention anyway.

The only bobble on the Democrat side was that it took a couple of phone calls to get the convention rate for our housing. Other than that, it’s been smooth sailing. Perhaps the credentialed organizations are being well-treated on the Republican side, not that we would know (sob).

In any event, the bottom line is that BNN will be extensively covering the Democratic convention with live on-the-spot blogging, interviews, etc. Our coverage of the Republican convention will be limited to (maybe) our Minneapolis-area writers doing whatever they can on a drive-by.

I hope the rest of the Republican organization does a better job going forward.