Good luck getting a press credential to cover Occupy Wall Street

New York Observer
After reading an Awl post noting that most of the journalists arrested at the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations around the country were not full-time reporters for mainstream news outlets, the spokesman for Mayor Michael Bloomberg wrote that just 5 of those arrested in New York were credentialed by the city. “Why should some random NYPD take your word that you’re press?” he asked the Observer’s Megan McCarthy. Her colleague Elizabeth Spiers looked at the city’s guidelines on how to get a press pass and describes them as, “to put it nicely, Kafkaesque.” The city requires that applicants prove they’ve covered at least six breaking news or other events where the city puts up barriers to the public. To get this press pass, Spiers writes, “you have to demonstrate coverage as an uncredentialed reporter in order to get credentialed.” || What’s the value of a press pass? In a post about how Occupy Wall Street has demonstrated the value of Storify, Jon Mitchell quotes Storify co-founder Xavier Damman: “The police in New York don’t realize that it doesn’t matter to not have journalists on the scene, because everybody is a reporter.” || Take to the air: Maybe news orgs could use drone aircraft to cover protests from above, like The Daily did to survey the aftermath of the tornados that struck Tuscaloosa, Ala. (The New York Times) | Throwing the book at him: NPPA lawyer surprised that city of Rochester, N.Y., is fighting dismissal of charge against student journalist covering protests (Democrat and Chronicle)