Between the Democratic and Republican national conventions this year, some 30,000 reporters are going to make use of their employers' travel budget to attend. Except are they really heading to Denver and St. Paul to get an Obama or McCain scoop, or just to party at network? What is this, the Beijing Olympics?

Political conventions are to the media what happy hour — or 11am — is to Don Draper. Here's JackShaf on why reporters waste their time and their media companies' dwindling budgets:

They fight their colleagues for the honor to attend because a political convention is a gas to cover. It's like a vacation, only no spouses! There's free food, plenty of booze, nice hotels, lots of pals in the press and politics dishing gossip, and the assignment is easy to report. Ferguson concludes that political conventions exist only to make the second convention—the "journalists' convention"—possible. "The parasite has consumed the host," he wrote.

So … see you there, Shafer?