Tad Talk People often ask me what it’s like to cover general conference. Well, I have a favorite story I like to share.
A veteran Utah reporter walked into the press room at the very back of the first level of the Conference Center before the final session of the April 2018 general conference and said that he couldn’t believe that after three decades as a journalist in the state, he was finally covering conference for the first time.
Well, that was the first conference of the President Russell M. Nelson administration, and it was staggering for the number and pace of major changes announced. The veteran reporter talked about what had transpired so far with many of the two dozen or so other reporters, then the lights dimmed and the audio went up in the room and the final session began.
The press room is generally as quiet as the rest of the Conference Center during a session, save for all the typing sounds. The church’s Public Affairs staff provides us with copies of each talk as the speaker stands to deliver it, which helps us and increases accuracy. So we are trying to internalize the talks faster than they are spoken, tweeting out quotes as they are spoken and writing our stories. During this session, President Nelson stood up and in two minutes announced the retirement of the church’s longtime home and visiting teaching programs. The veteran reporter grunted. We were all maxed out.
The next two speakers then explained the details about how a new ministering program would replace home and visiting teaching. It was overwhelming for everyone. Even one of the speakers, Elder Jeffrey R. Holland of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, after calling the weekend a rush of revelation, laughed and said, “President Nelson, I don’t know how many more ‘rushes’ we can handle this weekend.”
Well, the veteran reporter grunted again. He said something along the lines of, this is what happens in the first session of conference I cover. He was on the phone with his editor, explaining what was happening and getting instructions for how the paper needed it covered. We all worked furiously to keep up with tweeting from each talk and writing our regular stories and adding additional stories on the changes.
Then, President Nelson stood again at the end of the session, and without warning said he would announce seven new temples. This final rush of news turned into the last straw for this veteran reporter.
“I give up!” he shouted. |
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When President Nelson named a first-ever temple for India and then, at the end of his list, added a first temple for an unnamed city in Russia, the reporter said, “Well, of course!”
We all tried to tweet out the locations of the new temples as fast as President Nelson named them. We all knew the announcement meant we would need to write an additional, unexpected story. But I was laughing to myself about the truth this reporter revealed about covering conference.
It’s always a whirlwind, even without announcements, as my conference-coverage partner, Trent Toone, and I scramble to capture the essence of a devotional talk in a few tweets, then quickly turn in stories during and after each session.
The rush of revelation marking the President Nelson administration produces mad scrambles as reporters try to understand and distill new policies or initiatives quickly. On a side note, President Nelson knows this. With a wink and a smile, he said to me once in Chile, “Are we giving you enough to write about?”
At the Deseret News, I’ve been given the privilege in recent years to be part of a change to our conference coverage. While I tweet during each talk and lightly moderate the discussion among thousands of Twitter followers and generally post a story halfway through each session and at the end of each session, I’m also making connections between emerging themes. Then on Saturday night and again on Sunday night, I sit down and write a contextualized story designed to capture overarching concepts and themes in an effort to show what church leadership is thinking and doing with the conference and what it’s like for church members.
This time, for example, on Saturday night I wrote that the accelerated pace of announcements has created a sense of the “days never to be forgotten” that Oliver Cowdery wrote about at the end of Joseph Smith-History 1.
On Sunday night I wrote about how President Nelson’s announcement of a bicentennial year is a signal of how he is using the past to point the church toward the future.
Sometimes I think about that reporter shouting, “I give up,” as new stories, assignments and travel surge at me. There’s no doubt it’s an incredible experience to be covering this historic era of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. |
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My Recent Stories
Church releases Layton temple rendering (Oct. 8, 2019)
President Nelson to visit Southeast Asia next month (Oct. 8, 2019)
Historic conference ends with call to prepare for 2020 bicentennial of First Vision (Oct. 6, 2019)
President Nelson announces edited temple recommend questions, says next April will be ‘different from any previous conference’ (Oct. 6, 2019)
Days never to be forgotten: President Nelson keeps up church’s ‘accelerated pace’ (Oct. 6, 2019)
October 2019 general conference: Here are all the changes that were announced (Oct. 5, 2019)
Women’s session: Promise of spiritual blessings, revised Young Women theme and new temples (Oct. 5, 2019)
Major changes announced for Latter-day Saint youth programs (Oct. 5, 2019)
‘Bold initiatives and new announcements’ have one purpose, church leaders say (Oct. 5, 2019)
After this week’s historic policy change, what’s next for Latter-day Saints at general conference? (Oct. 5, 2019) |
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What I’m Reading ... It’s never too late, right? I wanted to read “‘A Problem from Hell’: America and the Age of Genocide” when it came out in 2002. That was in the months just after I covered the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City and before the Deseret News hired me in January 2003. I’ve finally picked it up at the Provo Library, and it’s outstanding. Author Samantha Powers is an immensely talented writer. The words read easily but the subject cuts deep. I feel like I’m earning a master’s degree without having to wade through awful academic writing.
Savannah Hopkinson sits across from me at the Deseret News, where she labors for the editorial pages of the paper. She’s written a fine piece about her family’s conversion to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and how their history is tied to President Nelson’s temple announcements on Saturday night, which she wrote, “sent me into shock.”
I thought I was a fairly big nerd about the “Black Sox scandal,” the term for the Chicago White Sox throwing the 1919 World Series for money. I read the book “Eight Men Out” and watched the movie and read whatever I saw, but The Athletic (paywall) has a new piece on obsessives who are still working the cold case. Meanwhile, the fantastic writer Steve Wulf, who played a role in inventing rotisserie-style fantasy baseball, published a story today on ESPN.com exploring the question, “Could the Black Sox scandal happen today?” As ever, he’s produced a fun, informative read about a fascinating episode in American history and why the 100-year anniversary is equally fascinating. |
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