Crash course on White House reporting

Jump to Comments

It was a day for firsts. I sat in on my first-ever White House briefing, I drove in a motorcade with the president of the United States (granted I have no idea which one of the 17 cars he was actually in) and I served as part of the White House press pool.

And I thought the highlight of my day would be finally meeting the other Newsday reporters.

So let me start from the beginning. I showed up at the office at 10 a.m. with expectations to hang tight until my bureau chief and other members of Newsday returned from St. Paul. But instead I got a call from my boss who said, “I forgot it was our day to send someone to the press pool, so I’m gonna need you to go to the White House where you’ll be going on a day trip with the president.”

I was thinking, “no way did those words really just come out of his mouth,” but I responded with, “OK, tell me what to do and I’m there.”

I knew something like the press pool existed, but I got a crash course on the details over the phone. The pool travels with the president anytime he leaves the White House or Camp David. Pool members are the eyes and ears for the rest of the media … if anything out of the ordinary happens, they are there to get the report out to everyone else. Even if nothing eventful happens (as was the case Friday), pool members still send out a report documenting the day. So I was a representative for daily newspapers. Other organizations there on Friday included AP, Reuters, CNN and a few others. But it wasn’t a big group … about 12 or 13 people including photographers, broadcasters and reporters.

After I got through security at the White House, I found the press briefing room, where Dana Perino, Bush’s spokeswoman, was still answering questions. A friendly reporter showed me how to sneak in the back, and I caught the tail end of the conference. Then I met up with a press aide and the other journalists in the pool for the day.

We piled into two vans and were off to Camp David to pick up the president and all who travel with him. We waited outside the grounds for about an hour and a half to join the motorcade and then headed to Gettysburg, where Bush and friends were to take a private tour of battlefields, monuments and a new visitor center. The tour was private (not open to the media), and I never actually saw President Bush, but the whole experience was just incredible.

Riding in the motorcade was interesting. The thing is, for it to be effective, each car in the line has to stay really close to the next, prompting some manic driving at times. I held tight to my seat belt.

Once in Gettysburg, Bush and friends stopped at a memorial while we went on to the new visitor center for a press tour. Once the prez was finished visiting battlefields and monuments, aides ushered us out of the building along with everyone else, and he got a private tour of the visitor center. In the meantime, secret service men were everywhere with their giant guns and binoculars scoping the scene. When he was finished, we all piled back into our vehicles and the motorcade rolled out.

It was a long, uneventful day for all the other press members there – but it was one I will never forget. On the ride back to Camp David, I phoned in my notes to my bureau chief, who typed up the report since I didn’t have a computer with me. And from Camp David to DC (which if you’re curious is about an 80 minute drive), I talked with another reporter and reflected on the awesomeness of what had just happened … my first week in DC, and I already feel like a part of it all.

3 Comments

Filed under Newsday, Washington D.C.

Tags: Newsday, Reporting, Washington D.C.