By DAVID HERBERT
(Credit: Library of Congress/The Architect of the Capitol)
Wear long underwear, don't bank on your cell phones working and avoid drinking too much coffee -- there won't be enough Porta-Potties to go around.
Those were just some of the tips veteran reporters and inauguration organizers dispensed at a National Press Club panel discussion this morning, where scores of journalists flocked to scoop up trade secrets for covering Jan. 20.
President-elect Barack Obama's inauguration is poised to shatter previous attendance records with as many as 4 million spectators expected, and the Fourth Estate is scrambling to keep pace. Print media outlets have already requested twice as many press passes as in 2004, and there's still a week before the application deadline, said Joe Keenan, superintendent of the Senate Press Gallery.
Securing a press pass may be the easy part for journalists, who will then need to navigate the crowds and withstand the elements, the panel agreed.
To get a jump on the masses, Carole Florman, communications director for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said journalists will be able to enter an hour or so before the general public, and that they should line up well before that.
With Pennsylvania Ave. closed off as much as 24 hours before the inauguration, and Jim Carroll of the Louisville Courier-Journal predicting the Metro to be "a freaking nightmare," reporters could sleep in their offices, the panelists offered, though camping out on Pennsylvania Avenue or the Mall will be illegal.
David Lightman, McClatchy's Washington correspondent, said cub reporters should treat the inauguration like a crime scene: Stake out pay phones ahead of time in case Blackberries and cells don't work and locate coffee shops and bars to retreat to for filing stories. Carroll suggested reporters ditch their umbrellas, which are banned, wear plenty of long underwear and use pencils instead of ballpoint pens, which will likely freeze.
And for all the planning, Carroll noted that there's a chance bad weather could cancel the whole event. In 1961, President Kennedy's parade was saved only after troops armed with flamethrowers melted the ice from Pennsylvania Avenue. In 1985, when the wind chill pushed the temperature 20 degrees below zero, President Reagan's second inaugural was moved indoors to the Capitol Rotunda.
The choice to move the event indoors is the president-elect's alone, Florman explained, and this year the Rotunda is again the backup venue.
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