2012 Dove Awards: Behind the scenes

Get­ting a chance to cov­er the Dove Awards is a privledge, but it’s not as glam­orous as it seems. Just as any jour­nal­ist, espe­cial­ly sports reporters, will tell you. As a for­mer sports­writer, I can tell you it’s a long day cov­er­ing a base­ball game. You are at the sta­di­um hours before game time, even before the ath­letes, and hours after every­one has left the sta­di­um — but that’s for anoth­er post. This is about the Dove Awards. I don’t know if they do this for the Gram­mys, but here’s a look at what hap­pens in the Doves’ press­room.

We don’t get a seat in the venue — this year at the Fox The­atre in Atlanta — to watch the awards show, jour­nal­ist are in a back­room, watch­ing the show on a big screen TV. Even at the Grand Ole Opry, we were in a room below the stage area. I actu­al­ly bought a tick­et when I cov­ered my first Dove Awards just so I could pop in and watch a bit of the show to get the feel for the show and the leg­endary Opry.

Usu­al­ly tables are set up for jour­nal­ists, espe­cial­ly ones that are work­ing on dead­line, along with pow­er out­lets for our many com­put­ers, phones, etc. This year, there were so many media pass­es giv­en out tables were not avail­able, just chairs fac­ing a stage area. Luck­i­ly my pals in the press helped me set up my “nest” area along the wall. I used a piano bench as my table; Ter­ry DeBoer used a chair as his table. And for­tu­nate­ly he had an exten­sion cord as oth­er jour­nal­ists were plug­ging in to recharge phones and lap­tops. I had an extra phone charg­er, and I charged numer­ous phones through my com­put­er. Here’s a pic of Ryan from Jesus Freak Hide­out and how he rolls at the Doves.

So now after set­ting up shop in our makeshift “press row,” the Dove Awards began with the preshow pre­sen­ta­tion of awards. While the pre­sen­ta­tion was shown on the TV, once an artist is brought into the press area, the TV is turned down so we can take pic­tures of the artists and then ask ques­tions. In the mean­time, the show must go on, so awards are pre­sent­ed while we are inter­view­ing and tak­ing snaps. The fun­ny part is after that artist leaves the press area most of the jour­nal­ists are ask­ing, “Who just won?” “Who per­formed?” It’s rather humor­ous try­ing to keep up and keep you the read­er post­ed on what is hap­pen­ing.

And then there’s the “Are you tweet­ing?” “What did you tweet?” “I missed that, what hap­pened?” “Do you have a list of win­ners?” “How did you do that?”

So as you can see I did­n’t get to watch the show live while I was work­ing, so I’m DVRing it tonight so I can see the per­for­mances. And you also get a glimpse of the cama­raderie among reporters that tends to spread across a vari­ety of events we cov­er.