Thousands of journalists from near and far will pour into Milwaukee this month for the Super Bowl of political reporting. One of them will be Jessie Opoien, who has been covering Wisconsin politics from Madison for 11 years, the last year with the Journal Sentinel. Opoien was also one of 15,000 credentialed journalists at the 2016 RNC in Cleveland, reporting on it for The Capital Times newspaper.
MM: What’s it like covering a national convention?
JO: It’s wild. There are a lot of events during the day tailored to the media. Like, The Washington Post had a sponsored area where they would host panel discussions and things like that. And then you’ve got the programming – what you see on TV, with speeches and events at night. Everyone has parties after. It’s very much a work hard, play hard situation, with a lot of action in a short amount of time.
MM: How do you figure out what’s good to cover?
JO: It’s a fire hose. The year I was covering it, Wisconsin was so much in focus – we wanted to see what Scott Walker said, what Ron Johnson said, Tommy Thompson was there. What is the Wisconsin delegation doing? Covering it from that lens is almost easier, I think, than being a national reporter where you have to figure out what the overarching story is.
MM: I imagine there’s a strong social element, too.
JO: Oh yeah, it’s like summer camp for journalists. You meet people you follow on Twitter and you interact with online. You’re all in this little bubble for a few days and get to hang out. You don’t get a lot of sleep.
