I’ve decided to call tonight On the Waterfront Night at the Republican National Convention. While Governor Palin was the highlighted speaker of the evening, the hours leading up to her address were filled with speeches from several men who had campaigned for the 2008 Republican nomination. And lost. Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Rudy Giuliani all took the stage to talk about the campaign, the candidates, money, terrorism, Barack Obama, and most of all change. When I saw these three names in order on the night’s speakers’ schedule I immediately added a fourth: Marlon Brando. In my head I imagined each one of these politicians doing their version of Brando’s Academy Award-winning speech:

You don’t understand! I could have had class, I could have been a contender. I could have been somebody. Instead of a bum, which is what I am.

I snagged a credential to get me into the hall for Romney and Huckabee’s speeches. I crouched behind our journalists in the daily press writing press stands to the left of the stage and looked out over the crowd of delegates. The atmosphere inside the hall during these speeches was powerful. The speakers were playing to a partisan crowd, to be sure. And the messages sent were intentionally crafted to be incendiary– firing up the base of the political party. That I did not mind; that effect is a function of these conventions. And I did not particularly mind the difference of political opinions being expressed when compared to my own. There were two particular elements I did mind: the appeal to fear and the the broad disparity between what was said to motivate and the subsequent policies enacted once in power. Mitt Romney’s attacks on liberal government were crystalline examples of the latter. Rudy Guiliani’s incessant waving of the bloody shirt the epitome of the former.

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So for the first time I get to really watch the process of a full day of news production in the bureau. By the time the second day of the DNC came around and I was comfortable with the setup enough to play ‘fly on the wall’ I had to hop on an airplane and come to St. Paul. Yesterday was a highly abbreviated session due to Hurricane Gustav. So today was the first real day. It was interesting to watch, to just be a part of and absorb as it happened around me.

But I want to back up and talk a little bit about last night. I spent most of yesterday evening with two of the photographers from the Los Angeles Times. I met up with Genaro Molina and Myung J. Chun back at the hotel. I’ve been talking to them off and on over the course of the last few days, mostly legitimate work-related topics dealing with the setup and logistics of shooting the convention. What services are available where? Where can I get credentials? What’s the best way for me to upload these pictures quickly? Last night I sat down and talked with them both in some depth about their careers in photojournalism. What they like about it, what they could leave be. Challenges with competing with the wire services, particularly for Internet content. We talked about the conversion from film to digital in late 1999. The place for still photography in journalism. Chun had a number of interesting thoughts on that topic as he moved from still photography to video about six years ago.

The whole evening was entertaining and enlightening. They were both very forthcoming and engaging. I really enjoyed the opportunity to talk shop with them. And then to get to follow up that conversation with observing them work– the selection of shots, the submission, and the anxious wait to see what, if anything, had been selected. This is another of the sort of immediate, visceral experience I was hoping to have. It was good.

As for news stories of the day, they were primarily follow-up to the stories from yesterday: the aftermath of Gustav, the imminent threat of three more named storms in the Atlantic, further fallout and discussion of Bristol and Sarah Palin. Some of our journalists are still working that story. Rumor is that Levi Johnston, Bristol’s boyfriend, will be in attendance at the convention tomorrow night when Sarah Palin is scheduled to speak. A number of other journalists have moved beyond this story and on to investigate Sarah Palin’s executive work. They are taking a hard look at her apparent change in position on the Bridge to Nowhere in Alaska. Tom Kole, Broadcasting Manager of the Washington DC bureau, commented to me first thing in the morning as I arrived about Sarah Palin’s apparent change in position regarding the Federal funding about the bridge. Look for more of these sorts of stories as the news media scours her Alaskan political career.

With Gustav dissipating and the New Orleans levees still intact, hurricane hunters looked further east in the Atlantic and reported three tropical storms now with names: Hanna, Ike and Josephine. Some or all of these storms may develop into hurricanes and head toward the United States. None of them will make landfall in the US before the close of the Republican convention, however, so it looks to be a return to more normal activities here in the hall.

Two other small items. First, while poking around the hall this morning before the session opened, I ran across Jon Voight on Radio Row. Radio Row is the name for a section of the conference center set aside specifically for the use of talk radio. Their setups are not particularly fancy: usually a table, three or four microphones, some audio equipment, a phone or two, maybe a television or a laptop. But there are dozens of these setups, one right next to the other running the length of the hallway. Radio Row is actually four rows set up like this in parallel. Voight had been cornered by a mob of print, radio, and television journalists when I happened across him. At the time he was answering questions about Bristol and Sarah Palin. Bristol’s pregnancy continued to be the big news story throughout the morning. Jon Voight has been vocal about his political opinions this election cycle. Last week he published an opinion piece critical of Barack Obama in the Washington Times. I suspect that publication has something to do with his appearance at the convention.

Second, Ron Paul hosted a sell-out crowd in Minneapolis today for his “Rally for the Republic”. I believe Ron Paul’s Libertarian-leaning, conservative politics pose an intriguing dynamic for the Republican party and I leave you tonight with a brief glimpse into the rally as presented by Myung J. Chun.

Hurricane Gustav made landfall south and west of New Orleans today as a Category 2 storm. This was down from the Category 3 classification last night. Many meteorologists expected Gustav to grow in strength to Category 4 rather than lessen. So the hurricane made landfall with strong winds, rain, tornadoes and storm surge of 6-8 feet. We’ll see what sort of long-term impact the storm has for Louisiana and Texas over the next several days, but initial reports seem to indicate that this hurricane has not had the dramatic effect that Katrina and Rita did three years ago. I may be premature, but I suspect that its impact on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul will be minimal and shortly the convention will return to its more typical course of events.

Rather than Gustav, the big story of the morning at “The X” is Bristol Palin. Bristol is the 17 year-old daughter of Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin. Bristol is five-months pregnant. Apparently this story came to light today in an attempt by the McCain campaign to rebut the rumors that Palin’s youngest child was actually her daughter’s. Steve Schmidt, McCain’s senior campaign strategist, was outside our workspace talking about the news. What began as a small group of 3 quickly grew into 20 or more. To the point where the crash of journalists and photographers threatened to knock down our temporary walls. Inevitably the media tried to get a reaction quote from Barack Obama. Obama responded in a way that reminded me of Bill Clinton, “I have said it before and I will repeat it again: people’s families are off limits. People’s children are especially off limits. This shouldn’t be part of politics.” He refused to say anything about Bristol Palin. Meanwhile, I overheard Aaron Zitner, an editor for the Los Angeles Times, say regarding the timing of the story, “Just when I wake up and say no one should be working on deadline today. We’ve been working all these days straight. The campaign serves up something just so incredible.”

So, go out there and read the papers, find out all the rest of the scandal. These people are working hard to bring it to you.

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The word of the day is: Gustav. This hurricane has impacted Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Cuba and is now bearing down on Louisiana. It is almost three years to the day since Hurricane Katrina followed a similar path through the Caribbean, the Gulf of Mexico and through New Orleans. When media outlets began covering this storm last week I thought the attention was a bit premature. Today, with the hurricane a couple hundred miles off the coast of Louisiana and the National Hurricane Center predicting the storm should grow in strength before it makes landfall, I think the hurricane coverage is more appropriate.

In light of the storm’s approach on Louisiana, the Republican National Committee and the McCain campaign today decided to significantly curtail the extent of their national convention. We had been warned that these changes might take place and they outlined the specifics for us at 3:00 pm this afternoon. Tomorrow the convention will begin as scheduled, but in abbreviated fashion. They will ensure a quorum to do business, constitute the convention and fulfill the basic minimal requirements necessary to make the convention a legal and binding event in the political process. Nothing more. No political rhetoric. No additional activity.

Going forward the RNC will hold a political briefing each day at noon with the specific details of the schedule of events they have planned for that day– and that day only. They are approaching this set of circumstances on a day-by-day basis. The carefully-scripted playbook of speeches and entertainment has been tossed out the window. I was quite interested to learn that this is the first time a national convention has been altered due to external concerns like a natural disaster.

Michael Brown had an interesting quote published today. Michael Brown led FEMA during Katrina. He was forced to resign his position shortly after that storm as the extent of the agency’s failings became clear. Yesterday, the Associated Press quoted Brown as saying, “You don’t play politics with disasters.”

This was a very different sort of day than the evening before the DNC in Denver. — I have commented several times on the difference in tone around the site, and now external factors have tossed a new variable into the mix. I spoke with a number of reporters, engineers and photographers in our temporary bureau, trying to get an idea of their feelings about these changes. Many of them were anxious to get to Louisiana and cover that. I eavesdropped as Jim outfitted the Los Angeles Times Midwest Bureau Chief, P.J. Huffstutter, with a satellite phone and portable video camera. I talked briefly with her about why she desired to go to Louisiana. She had covered rural Louisiana and Mississippi after Katrina and Rita three years ago and said that while the work was difficult and unpleasant– hot, loud, living out of a car– the stories were incredibly compelling.

One of my personal goals with this project is to get a small sense of what it is like to work in a newsroom. And for a little while today on the first official day of production I got that wish. I hope I will expand on that experience over the next several days.

Wish me luck.