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RIDING THE DONKEYS AND THE ELEPHANTS: Jack Shafer’s advice in Slate that the press skip the political conventions altogether — he urged the media to “withdraw all reporters and force the curious to rely on a C-SPAN feed…[because] these political gatherings tend to produce very little real news” — hasn’t been heeded by glossy magazines. Among the estimated 15,000 members of the press attending the Denver and St. Paul, Minn., events are from monthly or weekly titles that once would have been off the hook for 24-hour coverage, but can now offer it on the Web. Vanity Fair is putting to work its husband-and-wife political team of Dee Dee Myers and Todd Purdum (in addition to throwing a party at both conventions), and the Atlantic will be represented both in print and online, with Marc Ambinder, latest blogger hire Ta-Nehisi Coates, Hillary Clinton scoop-procurer Joshua Green (whose most recent memo coups scored an all-time high for theatlantic.com’s Web traffic), and editor in chief James Bennet. Glamour’s Washington editor Linda Kramer Jenning will attend both conventions, as will several Glamocracy bloggers. Over at Cosmogirl, senior editor Tara Roberts will be going with the magazine’s 18-year-old political correspondent Katie Glueck, but corporate sisters Esquire and Marie Claire won’t be sending anyone, spokesmen for those magazines said.
At The New Yorker, Washington correspondent Ryan Lizza will be at both conventions (and has a piece out Monday on the Democrats’ bid for the West), as will George Packer and Hendrik Hertzberg, both of whom will blog from them. Executive editor Dorothy Wickenden will be at the Democratic confab and will host the regular political podcast from there; Raffi Khatchadourian will report from the Republican convention.
GQ, which is throwing a party at both conventions, is sending Lisa DePaulo and Andrew Corsello to Denver and Robert Draper to St. Paul. Photographer Jeff Riedel will be shooting subjects for a portfolio of political figures slated for the November issue. (Readers of the Washington Post got a behind-the-scenes look Thursday at the wrangling of top John McCain aide Steve Schmidt, who was quoted as saying, “I will not appear in the pages of GQ.…It’s the thing I despise most about this job. I don’t want to be in GQ. I want to go home.” According to a GQ spokesman, Schmidt rescheduled twice and then canceled.) Over at New York magazine, John Heilemann and Jada Yuan will cover both conventions for the print edition and the Web site, and Joe Hagan will be at the Democratic one.
As for the celebrity weeklies, People will have three senior staffers on deck, although Us Weekly, which has gotten a lot of attention for its political coverage and access, didn’t respond by press time.
— Irin Carmon
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