How the Media Adapt When News Is Scarce

Media organizations have turned the political parties’ quadrennial gatherings this year into laboratories of innovation and experimentation, straying from their traditional areas of expertise as they search for new ways to engage readers and audiences.

So far, it seems, the new media has decided that it wants to be the old media, and the old media has decided that it wants to be the new media. Convention coverage has come a long way from the days when the “boys on the bus” — the pack of A-list print reporters like R. W. Apple Jr. of The New York Times, David S. Broder of The Washington Post and Walter R. Mears of The Associated Press — set the pace for political reporting more than a generation ago armed with little more than a pen, a pad and a wicked hangover. Back then, conventions were less scripted and generated more surprises, while today’s media labor to enliven coverage of what typically are endless hours of preordained events.