Covering the Black Friday lines

Jessica Kwong of the San Antonio Express-News writes about what it was like to cover the Black Friday shopping lines — and her difficulty getting into one store.

Kwong writes, “With my press badge and reporter’s notebook, nobody questioned me as I took the liberty to walk around the front of the line and interview people. Employees were pretty relaxed about it actually, answering my questions about how they were handling the situation while declining to give me their names.

“At midnight, they’d start to let 30 people at a time into the store so to avoid chaos and injuries. On the dot, they opened the doors and the deserving people at the front of the line sped-walked in. I followed, though didn’t get far.

“An employee stopped me on my tracks and clearly wasn’t buying my explanation about covering the event for the newspaper.

“I showed him my badge. Still, he didn’t budge. I was missing the moment I needed to see, people scrambling for those TVs. I thought about jumping over the barricade of shopping carts, but that would surely make my stay short-lived.

“I was told I would have go to the end of the line and wait like everyone else, because how would they know that I wasn’t going to jump in there and snag all the electronic treasures for myself? Not dismayed I pressed my case.”

Read more here.