Friday, February 10, 2012

St. Paul Scoop: Tech Round-Up

August 31, 2008

Several stories of interest in Convention Daily:

Back-To-Back Conventions Have Crews Wired

As exhausted Democrats rest up from last week's festivities and Republicans prepare to throw their quadrennial grand old party, weary media are wrestling with the hassles, expense, and physical challenges of relocating operations from Denver to the Twin Cities with no break between the two parties' conventions.

Many information-technology staffers are on week two of a three-week convention road trip because they had to be in Denver long before the reporters, editors, and photographers to install the computer networks, fiber-optic cables, phone lines, and other technology the media depend on to do their job.

Read the full story here.

Bloggers Plan To Blanket GOP Convention

Move over, Bill Kristol. The 2008 Republican National Convention will be a showcase for a new crop of young political analysts who made their reputations not on ink and paper but in the blogosphere. GOP insiders will be toggling for their news and gossip on the Internet, checking in frequently with blogs like Erick Erickson's RedState and Ed Morrissey's Hot Air.

This year, the two major political parties issued credentials for far more political bloggers not affiliated with traditional media outlets than they did in 2004. Four years ago, Republicans credentialed about a dozen bloggers, and Democrats registered a little over 30. In 2008, Republicans expect to host as many as 200 bloggers in Minneapolis-St. Paul; the Democrats credentialed 120 bloggers at their convention in Denver last week. The GOP is treating bloggers the same as traditional journalists, even providing them with a large office space equipped with Internet and telephone access.

Read the full story here.

GOP Convention Braces for Online Threat

The danger of cyber attack doesn't worry convention planners the way that protests and more-concrete threats do. But the result of an online assault could be a lot more spectacular than just some lost e-mail.

When Jason Bevis took over network-security operations for the 2004 Republican convention in New York, he found a system so permeable that hackers could have gained access to the host committee's internal network. From there, intruders could have tampered not only with communications from delegates and staff, but also with the text of each night's speeches -- even the words coming up on the teleprompter.

Read the full story here.

Join the Discussion

The National Journal Group has the right (but not the obligation) to monitor the comments and to remove any materials it deems inappropriate.

Comments powered by Disqus

 

Archives

Monthly Archives

Categories

Recent Posts

Recent Comments


Contributors

Juliana Gruenwald

Tech Writer

E-Mail: jgruenwald@nationaljournal.com.


Juliana Gruenwald has been covering tech and telecom issues for more than a decade for National Journal, Interactive Week, BNA and Congressional Quarterly. This is her second stint with National Journal. She was recruited by NJ in 1998 to help launch its first tech policy publication, Technology Daily. She left in 2000 to cover international tech and telecom issues for Ziff Davis Media's Interactive Week magazine. She started her career at United Press International as the wire service's first Helen Thomas Intern. She has a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Minnesota. A Minneapolis native, she misses the lakes but not the cold.


Josh Smith

Tech Reporter

E-Mail: joshsmith@nationaljournal.com.


Josh Smith covers technology policy as a staff reporter for National Journal. He previously interned at National Journal Daily, a Senate press office, and the Deseret News in Salt Lake City where he covered the state legislature, courts, and crime. In 2009 he graduated with honors from Southern Utah University after managing an award-winning student newspaper as editor-in-chief. Josh has received state, regional and national awards for his political and policy reporting, including first place in CapitolBeat’s 2009 Best of Statehouse Reporting college competition. A native of drop-dead-gorgeous Utah, Josh lives in Virginia with his wife, Amber.