From Deseret News archives:

In Denver, Riesen feeling his old newsman instincts

Published: Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2008 12:28 a.m. MDT
 |  E-MAIL | PRINT | FONT + - 
DENVER — Utah delegate Phil Riesen was kicking back at a sidewalk cafe in downtown Denver, watching the adult circus known as the Democratic National Convention, when a band of protesters marched by followed by an army of black-shirted SWAT policemen.

Instinctively, he almost got out of his chair.

Not so he could join them. So he could interview them.

"I'm sitting there picking out stories," says Riesen. "It was like second nature."

But he resisted the urge to actually get up, for several good and important reasons beyond the fact that he hadn't yet finished his drink.

He didn't have a cameraman with him, he didn't have a microphone, and he hasn't worked in TV for more than a decade.

"You always find the best stories when you're not working," smiles Riesen.

Not that he isn't working as a convention delegate, but it's a far different kind of duty from the career he left behind in journalism. These days, he's the one being interviewed, not the other way around.

This is Riesen's first national political convention as a delegate but the fifth he has attended in person. As a correspondent for KALL Radio and then a news anchor for Utah's ABC affiliate, Channel 4, he covered conventions in 1972 in Miami (Democrat), 1984 in Dallas (Republican) and San Francisco (Democrat) and 1988 in Atlanta (Democrat).

Story continues below
The first one was the most memorable. He was a young newsman summoned to a news conference in Miami where aides to nominee George McGovern announced the breaking news that there had been a break-in at Democratic headquarters at the Watergate Hotel in Washington.

The conventions fascinated him. Politics fascinated him.

"It wasn't like I constantly thought about it," he says. "But a small part of me always thought, 'Gee, I'd like to do that someday."'

He first left the mainstream media for the political world in 1999 as a nonpaid volunteer with the campaign of Ross "Rocky" Anderson, who was running for mayor of Salt Lake City.

Rocky won and hired Riesen as his first director of communications. Twenty-three days later he was called into the mayor's office.

"I was told we had to come up with an exit strategy," Riesen recollects.

For himself.

Riesen turned out to be the first of more than 40 people who would be fired or resign during Anderson's tenure. He looks back on it now as "a good learning experience," but he's still stunned that it happened. He suspects his identifying with the media might have been a factor.

"I was told I needed to work the press," says Riesen. "I said, 'I work with the press, I don't work the press.' I think that got back to Rocky."

Comments

You can be the first to comment on this story.

previousnext

Latest comments

5A: Hawks, Miners by the numbers

Well said about the coaches. They do our boys a great service and I wish I...

I am going to have a fun time in your wallets dudes and you can't stop it. ...

Obama announces jobs forum

Rather than have a "community organizer" type summit. Just cut taxes and get...

Letters: Obama 'too busy'

Actually Obama has played more golf in 10 months than bush did in 8 years. ...

Judge has changed policies specific to assisting kids. Most of the kids in...

Celtics crush Jazz

Make stops not 3's or Make stops & 3's but the stops come first!

I know some staunch Republicans that went bankrupt due to medical debt, they...

2A: Broncos vs. Wildcats numbers

Although I have been frustrated with the choices of venues for playoff games...

THE REST OF THE UTE GAMES ARE DEFINITELY A WIN/WIN... A TCU WIN AND A BYU...

PETA unhappy with Utah laws

If PETA doesn't want the unadopted animals put down or contributed to...

Advertisements
Advertisement