Here is a question worth asking at one of these big presidential debates: What the hell are 3000 journalists doing here?

Yes, 3000 journalists trooped out to Colorado for the first of the debates. No doubt a similar number have booked in for the others.

Why? How on earth can so many news outfits justify sending this army of journalists? To report on a debate that will be on television.

It is not as if there will be additional news to cover. The candidates don’t hold press conferences afterward. They don’t give stump speeches or interviews. Nobody sees them until they step onto the stage. In other words, 3000 news sleuths are not going to sniff up anything of value.

If you come up with a good answer for that question, you won’t have trouble answering this one: Why were 18,000 journalists at each of the political conventions? Three times as many journalists as there were delegates. Do you suppose any of them unearthed secrets that none of the other 17,999 did?