Name: Annie Tin
Hometown: Silver Spring, Md.
Position: Director of the House Daily Press Gallery
Alma mater: American University, political science and communications
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Washington Examiner: You grew up in the D.C. area. How did you get to Capitol Hill?
Tin: I got my first job working as a research assistant with the Chicago Tribune’s Washington, D.C., office, and after a year or 18 months there, I accepted my very first reporting job with the Orlando Sentinel in Florida, covering the Osceola County government.
Then I went to this journalism conference and met an editor from CQ who gave me an opportunity to move back to Washington, D.C. I was there about two-and-a-half years. I was what they would call a legislative reporter, but it was following the committees, following legislation at that level.
Examiner: You started covering Congress during the GOP wave elections of 1994. What was that like?
Tin: It was so much fun. It was the most amazing time to be a Capitol Hill reporter because everything was starting again from scratch, after 40 years of Democratic rule. It was just so much uncertainty. The elections kind of zeroed out everything.
Everybody, not just Congress, but reporters had to start all over again to figure out, OK, who are the movers and shakers? Who do I develop as sources? Who will be the chairs of the committees? Who are the ones that are going to identify what issues are important to those committees and who is going to be the one shepherding that legislation? It was an incredibly exciting time.
Examiner: You then spent 16 years at C-SPAN before taking this job in the press gallery. What do you do in this job?
Tin: I report to a board of journalists. These are elected journalists — they’re five, that serve two-year staggered terms — and the board is responsible for setting policy for how we credential journalists and what we do for the journalists that are credentialed through the daily press galleries. My job is to make sure that I execute the wishes of this board, and one of our chief responsibilities is to make sure that we credential bona fide journalists.
Examiner: How did the press galleries get involved in the political parties’ conventions every presidential election?
Tin: The parties said, “Hey, this is good for us because we’re not accused of favoring certain journalists because they’re writing favorable stories about our convention,” and not saying, “Oh, well we don’t like that reporter because they aren’t writing good stories about us.”
It takes [politics] out of it. And this is fascinating to discuss at this time when we’re dealing with the [presumptive GOP nominee Donald] Trump campaign and some of the things that are happening with his campaign, banning journalists from participating and attending his events.
Examiner: So, will you allow journalists that have been blacklisted from Trump events to be at the convention?
Tin: If they have made it through the credentialing process, yes. Because right now, we have been designated the credentialing authority.
Examiner: How does convention season complicate your life?
Tin: Basically, my workload increases 2,000 percent. And not just mine, all of our staff, because we all have to manage our legislative duties — that is, to run the office, the daily press gallery — to make sure that we’re meeting the needs of all the print journalists that cover Capitol Hill. But we also have to add in, on top of what we normally do, our duties in planning for the convention.
Examiner: What’s the most annoying thing you have to deal with when planning the conventions?
Tin: Do I have to answer that? [laughs] I guess it’s always having to deal with news organizations changing priorities, changing their plans. Yes, they want 25 credentials. Oh no, we actually want 35 credentials. And then the 35 people that we thought we’d send? Three people are dropping out and we want to list three more.
Examiner: What are your hobbies when you’re not doing all of that?
Tin: I don’t have any hobbies. I’m busy raising boy-girl twins. They’re 13. I guess I’ll say, I thoroughly enjoy traveling, and so every chance I get, I like to go somewhere with my kids and be exposed to how people live elsewhere in the country as well as abroad.
