The dreaded "presser": Who cares about press conferences?

I'm not sure who invested press conferences, but from a controlling the message point of view, this person was a genius.

I'm guessing the institution arose out of some kind of war where reporters were told it was too dangerous to be on the front line and therefore "appropriate spokespeople" would be available to answer their questions, or more often, give "non-answers" to their questions.

In fact, if I remember my history right, the Lyndon Johnson Administration had such press conferences (if I remember right they were called the "5 O'clock follies") during the Vietnam War. They garnered the name because they were so bogus and filled with propaganda they were deemed not credible.

So, it's only logical that today's news consumers and news reporters should question the value of press conferences.

We've had two in two days in Mankato. Republicans in the Legislature stopped at the Mankato Airport to give their take on things as they are going at the Capitol.

Next day, St. Paul Mayor Chris Coleman stopped in Mankato to make a statement about his opposition and that of our own city leaders to cuts those Republicans were making to local government aid.

Very little new was said at either press conference. So why do we continue writing about them? A fair question. Sometimes, it's a slow news day. Sometimes, we write reports to let people know what's happening, and we were there.

Sometimes, we hope a challenging question from our enterprising reporters will elicit something new. We can only hope.

But we should aspire to more than that. It's not on reporters. Many would rather not write about the same thing. Sometimes, we spend time going to these hoping something new might be said. So our coverage is kind of a defensive mechanism to make sure we don't miss anything or get beat on anything.

We have skipped these on occasion when the presenting party announces what they're going to announce in a morning press conference in the Twin Cities. The story is on the AP wire by 10 a.m. and yet they fly down to Mankato and offer the same news at 3 p.m.

I always jokingly wonder, do they thing we are in a different time zone? Maybe just a different universe.

I always tempted to tell these folks: We do have running water down here now.