Mr. Conway responds!

I just got off the phone with Mr. Bob Conway. You may recall he was the lone journalist to cover the 'Move America Forward' press conference this morning.

I wanted to pose a couple of questions to Mr. Conway and he was gracious enough to give a couple minutes of his time. Of course his call came in the middle of my lunch, but what are you gonna do?

My first question was regarding the feeling in the room. The anger that simmered. I asked him if he felt it and he assented that he of course did.

I followed up by asking if he had any thoughts as to why people were so angry. He responded that he felt the folks there probably felt as if their story wasn't getting out the way the anti-war stories were.

I then asked if he had any thoughts about why that might be so. We chatted for moment and ended up with the old chestnut 'If it bleeds it leads'.

Being new to the reporting game I forgot the question I most wanted to ask and had to call him back. That question was simply this--"Why was Cindy Sheehan front page news and Deborah Johns barely worth a mention. I found his answer intriguing, he said.

"Well, with Cindy Sheehan, she lost her son in Iraq and then took her protest to the presidents front door."

I asked if he felt it was more dramatic as a story, he assented that it was more dramatic.

I first of all want to thank Mr. Conway for taking the time to answer my questions and reiterate what I wrote earlier. He truly seems like a decent man.

I would like to encourage my fellow bloggers to do what I did here. I think it's very important. I think it's too easy sometimes to snipe from a distance instead of going to the source and asking directly. If we want to be new media we have to act like new media and that often means making a phone call or following up.

Chicago is a big city, and if I can get through to a reporter in a couple of hours, so can you.

What conclusions did I draw from my adventures today?

Well, I think we all have our biases and sometimes even very decent people come to situations prepared to hear what they want to hear. I think Mr. Conway was very honest with me, though, being in the belly of the beast, I do have to wonder if he can see the breaking wave of media as clearly as someone outside can. Hard to say. I genuinely think he was pursuing the story, but what story?

Again, this was an instructive day for me, and I say again to my fellow bloggers.

Don't be timid!