Special Coverage

ST. PAUL -- There is no Arabic word for "maverick."

When you work for Al Jazeera, that alone makes it kind of tough to report on John McCain's presidential nomination at the Republican National Convention. The network, said Abderrahim Foukara, the station's Washington bureau chief, had to find a way to describe McCain's reputation "without giving people the impression that he is a breakaway wing of the Republican Party."

Scott Bateman is covering the Republican National Convention for Salon.com, producing a style of commentary more "Daily Show" than op-ed page. 

Bateman has been interviewing delegates, protesters and others this week in St. Paul and using those recordings as the soundtracks for short animations annotated by his own occasional wisecracks. Wednesday, he produced an animation based on an interview with a Ron Paul delegate who was still upset about the fate of his candidate.

Journalists working the political conventions barely have time to eat, much less read and view one another's notable work. Let's make it easier.

If you are proud of the work you have done at the Republican National Convention, click "Comment" below this post and tell everyone about it. If you find great work that someone else has done, do the same. It can be anything -- details of how your organization is using your Web site, a cool interactive, a well-written analysis, a well-done video.

Thirty-six hours after Sen. Barack Obama finished his speech at Invesco Field at Mile High Stadium, the Rocky Mountain News and MediaStorm unveiled a 20-minute long documentary about the convention and his historic presidential nomination on its Web site.

"At last, at last, a dream fulfilled" is not your typical audio slide show. It's a high-end, quick-turnaround, modern-day retrospective on what the convention means for the city of Denver and what Obama's presidential bid means for the country.

DENVER – Rick Dunham went to the Democratic National Convention planning to report and write stories, blog, photograph and Twitter. His goal was to use all those tools to pack the Houston Chronicle's Washington, D.C., politics blog, Texas on the Potomac, with convention coverage.

He had some success, notably with Twitter and blogging, but also ran into a problem more basic than any of his new tools: He ran out of time.

DENVER -- This may be the year of news partnerships at the political conventions, with financial pressures and the need for so much content in so many forms. An interesting partnership is signaled at the top of one of the local papers, which reads: "The Denver Post & Politico."

The two news operations are sharing stories between their Web sites. Two pages of the Post are devoted each day to Politico coverage. They have co-sponsored a breakfast speakers series. And Politico has sold ads for the Post, according to the Post's Kevin Dale.

DENVER -- A political convention, I now can say, is an exciting, enormous affair, with all sorts of things to write about. The trouble is, you miss stuff while you're huddled over your laptop checking to see if you got decent video or writing a story or blog post.

So during Wednesday evening's speeches, I walked around and took in the scene. And I was rewarded. As I was walking through one of the lower tunnels, I entered an area where it looked like convention workers were stationed. Oddly, I had clear passage – everyone was standing on one side. Some of them had cameras. A policeman told me I'd have to clear the hallway pretty soon.

DENVER -- The Democrats chose Colorado for their convention in part to make a play for western states. Those states are home to the greatest number of Native Americans in the country, and a small Native American news site is bringing news from the Democratic National Convention back to its audience.

Three Reznet reporters are covering the Democratic convention much the way other local news media are: avoiding the speech coverage and focusing on issues and people of interest to their audience.

The difference between this site and others is in scale and precedence. This is the first time Reznet has covered a political convention. And with so few media focused on Native issues, as the Reznet reporters call them, if they weren't here, some of these stories might not ever be reported.

DENVER -- The Democratic National Convention Committee issued credentials to 124 bloggers this year -- a record number, but still just a fraction of the estimated 10,000 or so media camped out in four enormous tents in the parking lot of the Pepsi Center.

But the real action is several blocks away in the two-story "Big Tent," located in a downtown historic district with plenty of nightlife. There, several hundred bloggers (of 3,000 who applied) have paid $100 each for a spot at a table or couch, wireless Internet, the chance of electricity (there's never enough) two meals a day and all the free microbrewed beer they want.