Reporters’ Vigil Reaches Crescendo, Then a Sigh of Relief : Media: After scrambling for news and chasing reticent lawyers for two months, the press was happy to have nothing much to report.

It is not yet dawn. The doors are still locked shut at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building, but the press is installed in the outer courtyard. In less than an hour, the jury will render verdicts in the Rodney G. King federal civil rights trial. Media from around the world assemble for the denouement of a drama that has consumed them for two months.

One reporter props her notebook against a box of doughnuts as federal agents in riot gear scurry around in the darkness, satchels with big guns slung across their backs. Will nightfall find the city in flames?

The marshals unlock the door. The media beast wipes the sleep from its eyes. A cameraman says goodby to his wife as if he were going off to war. By day’s end, they will scramble for last-minute credentials, chase down jurors, harangue reticent lawyers, strap on bulletproof vests.

But in the end--with two convictions and the city apparently at peace--never would a press corps braced for unrest be so happy to have nothing to report.

*

“Where’s your blue pass?” a court security officer asked one member of the pack that had just filed in to hear the 7 a.m. verdicts.

Wonderful. The story of the decade and you cannot get in the pressroom without a blue pass. Suddenly the only thing more coveted than a blue pass was a yellow pass, the key to a seat in the courtroom where four Los Angeles police officers were on trial.

Reporters without credentials--and there were none left to be had--were forced to rely on their wits. One tried to photocopy a pass onto blue paper but could not get the right shade. He abandoned the process when informed that he might get arrested.

Upstairs in the frenetic pressroom, CBS television producer Michael Singer had a phone in each ear. The squawk boxes that would pipe sound directly from the courtroom two flights up were turned on. At two minutes to 7, the sound of chairs rustling came over the boxes. Everyone picked up their phones.

“Could everyone please be quiet?” Singer politely requested.

For two months they had squeezed themselves into this sardine can they called a pressroom, straddling the line between competitor and ally. A handmade sign inscribed with King’s immortal words after last spring’s riots seemed to guide them: “C-c-can’t we all get along . . . P-p-please?”

The judge announced that verdicts had been reached. The tension building since the jury retired to deliberate a week ago was about to crescendo. But this was not the media circus everyone expected. It was more like a High Mass.

Like priest and parish, the clerk ceremoniously began reading the verdicts while the broadcast reporters mumbled his every word in live feeds that were informing the world.

“We the jury in the above entitled cause . . . “ the clerk intoned.

“We the jury in the above entitled cause . . . “ the reporters chanted back.

Finally the answer. Two convictions, two acquittals. A conclusion this angry city might be able to live with in peace.

“Thank God,” one reporter said under his breath. Another was surprised to discover tears in her eyes.

*

At Florence and Normandie avenues, the most notorious flash point of last’s years unrest, reporters sighed audibly in relief.

Dave Chaney, a cameraman for CBS affiliate WCCO-TV in Minnesota, brushed the burden off his shoulder and put his camera there instead. Just that morning he had put on his bulletproof vest and called his wife back home to say he hoped to see her again. “I told her: ‘There are some things you need to know,’ ” he said. “Then I told her how much overtime I had, that I loved her, things like that.”

His colleague, WCCO reporter Jonathan Elias, shared the relief expressed by the people he interviewed. “I think this was justice,” he said. “I was here last year, and I know how crazy it got. We were shot at three times, had bricks and bottles thrown at us. I grew up here, and it’s strange having that happen with people you’ve lived with.”

As the morning wore on, journalists and photographers continued to outnumber residents who gathered at the intersection to exchange feelings of ambivalence, joy and disappointment. News helicopters buzzed overhead. Witnesses counted as many as eight at one point.

The verdicts forced reporters who arrived at the intersection equipped with bulletproof vests and gas masks to switch gears. They did so gladly. Frank Macho, a reporter with KTVK-TV, an ABC affiliate in Phoenix, stood on a corner with his crew, exchanging peace signs with happy motorists.

“Well, I guess two is better than none,” he said of the convictions. “It doesn’t make it harder to get a story just because there’s no trouble. People are happy, and that’s what matters.”

*

The rest of the day--a day they had thought might be spent dodging bullets--dissolved instead into a series of staid news conferences and a frustrating search to confirm details. Was acquitted Officer Timothy E. Wind holding rosary beads or just a crucifix? Did acquitted Officer Theodore J. Briseno cry and hug his brother?

Three people from a local television station were trying to persuade a reluctant sketch artist to spice up his drawing of the verdict scene.

“Powell slumped when he heard the verdict!” they insisted.

“He didn’t move a goddamn muscle!” the artist boomed.

By this time, the news media were done with the lawyers and the publicity-hungry politicians. They wanted the real thing: the 12 nameless jurors who had been kept under lock and key since the trial began two months ago.

“I am sure the press is extremely anxious to talk to you,” U.S. District Judge John G. Davies said in what might go down as one of the understatements of all time.

Reporters positioned to tail the jury van at a garage exit were given the slip when the driver took a different route. Armed with two courtroom sketches that the judge ordered drawn so that no one could tell what the jurors looked like, Los Angeles Times reporter Bob Pool was sent out to find them.

“From my sketches, they just looked like 12 happy-face stickers. They all had red noses and no eyes.” Pool said glumly. “I knew I wouldn’t find them.”

*

By noon, the flurry of courthouse news conferences was winding down. Most of the lawyers were gone; the four officers had refused to give interviews to anyone not paying money. Even some jurors were negotiating deals for interviews. Members of the Revolutionary Communist Party were trying to whip up a worker revolt outside, but their seeds of dissent fell on infertile soil.

Everyone there to talk to had been talked to. The blue passes were beginning to interview the yellow passes. It was time to go. The verdict anxiety that had gripped the building for a week loosened its hold. They could all rest easy.

At least until the sentencing.