‘This is preposterous,’ says the media about the media’s convention overkill

[Commentary] The balloons have already been stuffed into the rafters. The nominee is already known. The story lines are few. Yet 15,000 journalists — six for every one of the 2,500 delegates here — have encamped for the Republican National Convention.

Despite the news media’s exhaustively chronicled (by the news media) financial problems, there seems to be no slowdown in the intensity and investment by media companies in covering Donald Trump’s now-inevitable coronation as the party’s standard-bearer. The central media corridor, a kind of wonk Woodstock (with better food), is an arcade along East Fourth Street, adjacent to Quicken Loans Arena. The question is: Why are so many gathered for what is largely a scripted and preordained event? Barring unforeseen developments — and political conventions are engineered to avert unforeseen developments — the political conventions may be the least efficient news events that the media covers.