Know your credentials
"Where did you get that?" asked the college student with the red crew cut, motioning toward the press pass around my neck. "I want one."
As we gripped the same overhead bar on the Denver light rail, I told him he could probably make something equally convincing at the local Kinko's.
"Does that get you in everywhere?" he asked.
No. An MPR-issued ID alone will get you pretty much nowhere this weekend.
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To get anywhere worth going at the convention, you need a credential. What kind of credential? That depends where you want to go.
We received our official allotment from the Democratic National Convention Committee Sunday, a fat envelope stuffed with an assortment of different colored tickets. Here's what we got:
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13 Perimeter Passes: These get you through security and into the convention area. You can go to the special tents set up for the 15,000 reporters expected to cover this thing. These are the lowest class of media credential. They will not get you into the Pepsi Center, where the first three days of speeches are happening or Invesco Field at Mile High, where Barack Obama will accept the Democratic nomination on Thursday night.
4 Arena Passes: These are better than perimeter passes. You can still go into the press tent, but you can also get into the Pepsi Center and Invesco with them. What you can't do is get into the hall where the convention itself is happening. For that you'll need one of the....
2 Hall Passes: These get you into the hall, but you still can't get onto the floor where the delegates are. The only way we can do this is to redeem any of:
3 Arena Passes with special stickers on the back.... indicating that they can be temporarily upgraded to floor passes. If you want to go onto the floor, you need to trade one of these passes for another type of credential that lets you go mingle with the delegates for 20 minutes. Once your 20 minutes is up, you have to trade it back. And don't be late we were warned, or they'll confiscate your Arena Pass.
As you can see the better the passes are, the fewer you get. You get enough credential for everyone in your group to have one, but most of them won't get you anywhere near the action. You can trade passes with other members of your media organization -- in fact, it's the only way to get your job done -- but as with any scarce resource, it can lead to conflict, war even.
There have already been a few flare-ups among your radio friends here at MPR, but we'll treat those intra-company disputes as off the record.