Saturday, October 24, 2009

NY23: Triumphant return?

No, not for Dede "Abramoff" Scozzafava, but for me. Just pulled off I-87 about 40 miles north of Albany, N.Y. to file a quick note about my three-day trip to cover the Doug Hoffman campaign in the upstate New York special congressional election.

Departed my home Wednesday -- "I'm leaving today" -- and that afternoon phoned into Jimmie Bise my first exclusive: "All aces" for the Hoffman campaign. About 8:30 that evening, Jimmie blogged about Dick Armey's trip to NY23, while I was hanging out with the Freedomworks chairman at a meeting in Cicero, N.Y.

Thursday morning, I filed an American Spectator exclusive from Watertown, N.Y., and Jimmie picked it up here. A few hours later, I linked Hoffman's interview with the Watertown newspaper.

Thursday afternoon, I reported on Armey and Hoffman's Syracuse news conference for the Spectator, and blogged it here. Then I tried to get some sleep, but woke up and discovered that Sarah Palin had endorsed Hoffman. Meanwhile, Jimmie blogged about a new Hoffman radio ad.

Friday morning, I posted the "Go, Doug, Go" video and urged readers to emulate Dick Armey's objectivity. I posted Hoffman's radio interview with Glenn Beck and then scooped everybody with the $116K Thursday fundraising news.

Four hours of breakneck driving later, I filed from Hoffmania HQ in Saranac Lake, then set a nighttime speed record to make it to the campaign's Plattsburgh office for the video with Jeremy and Tony.

OK, so it's now nearly 2 a.m., and I'm poaching the computer at the business center of the Country Inn and Suites in Lake George, N.Y. When I asked for the key to the business center, the manager assumed I was a guest, and I exercised my right to remain silent. (Advice to would-be reporters: always wear a sports coat.)

Have I done enough? Can I make it home before 10 a.m.? Say a prayer for me. If you've enjoyed the coverage, just hit the tip jar and I'll try to make it back up here next week.

And if anyone wants to be a blog intern . . . well, if you've got a car, that would help. Don't know how much more of this the 2004 KIA Optima can handle. Let's hope New York State Police don't see me coming.

UPDATE (Noon): Just got home. Total round-trip, 1,328 miles. Exhausted. Must sleep.

2 comments:

  1. In what sense of the word was your Thursday report in American Spectator on Armey's endorsement an "exclusive"? You certainly weren't the only reporter at the Armey-Hoffman press conference, and other people had reported Armey's endorsement days before you even left for New York. The Dallas Morning News, The Hill, The Washington Independent, and RedState were among the many who reported it on Monday.

    You've been labeling your posts "exclusive" even when all you're reporting is where you'll drive to next. To quote the immortal Inigo Montoya, "I don't think that word means what you think it does."

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