RSSNot-Exactly-Liveblogging The Liberty Medal Ceremony
BY AMY Z. QUINN
I’m not sure what time this occurred to me, but it’s worth pointing out: Accepting the Liberty Medal with Bono was Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, formerly both finance and foreign minister for Nigeria and a member of DATA’s policy advisory board.
She’s the third woman in the Liberty Medal’s 19 years to have it placed around her neck. Former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor (who had to dodge falling set pieces) and in 1995, Sadako Ogata was the first.
4:45 p.m.Will Bunch just emailed a link to his brush with Bono, which happened earlier today when the rawkstah met with the editorial boards of the Inquirer and Daily News. To borrow a phrase from Jezebel, I am sofa king jealous.
***
4:33 p.m.
Back online. Don’t ask. 
Jamie Drummond, DATA’s executive director, and Joe Torsella, the Constitution Center’s president, are doing a little press conference — and I do mean little. Few reporters are here yet, and those who are (myself included) are too busy poring through the press kits to really ask substantive questions.
***
4:23 p.m. I’ve managed to find myself a shady patch of lawn outside the Constitution Center, where the press cowpen seems to sit a full five miles closer to the sun than the rest of the city. The bagged dinners have just arrived (turkey, roast beef or tomato-mozz?) and I’m settling in to do some liveblogging before the rest of the hordes arrive.
Dude, where’s my wireless?
I pick up a signal and get a one-off chance to check email, but can’t actually file anything until after the event in the designated pressroom that will be set up in the Center’s cafe. In the meantime, I’m in the dark unless I pony up for a temporary Earthlink pass, and that ain’t happening. Fortunately, there are any number of helpful press babelets (male and female) on hand and one of them, obviously the hippest of the bunch, has promised to see if he can get me a connection somewhere in the meantime. Above and behind me, on the camera platform, I hear the TV camera guys having the same conversations they were having 10 years ago, when I did this kind of thing all the time.
***
September 27th, 2007 at 7:32 pm
They were talking about your cans, weren’t they?
September 28th, 2007 at 12:15 pm
I’d like to know who measured the press pen’s distance from the stage; they said we’d be 85 feet from the stage, we were at least 85 yards from the stage.
-PhillyChitChat
September 28th, 2007 at 12:19 pm
Yeah, I was trying to be nice about that, but it was pretty out there, esp. considering all the empty seats in the audience section. I also appreciated being behind the Channel 6 boom camera, rendering the video screen and most of the stage invisible.
Ah well. Such indignities must be suffered in the name of jerrrrrrrnalizm.
March 31st, 2008 at 3:46 pm
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