One of the most entertaining parts of reporting at a political convention is how PR handlers ''shop'' their clients to the press, trolling among workspaces and along ''Radio Row'' and skyboxes with their elected official or spokesman or expert du jour.

It's a political version of the London street hawkers of yore, calling out their wares to entice buyers:

• ''I've got the Israeli ambassador to the U.S. coming.... Would you like to talk to the ambassador?'' '
• "Robert Mosbacher.... He's the general chairman of the campaign.... Former Commerce Secretary Mosbacher.... ''
• An African-American man trying to get himself interviewed about how untrustworthy Barack Obama is....
• A Tennessee congresswoman....
• A Hillary Clinton apostate....
• Senator Orrin Hatch (R-Utah), on his third pass through the battery of interviewers....
• One of John McCain's domestic policy advisers...

Going once ... going twice ...

The street peddler woodcut, originally supplied by the American Antiquarian Society, was taken from the introductory essay to New Media, 1740-1915 (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), edited by Lisa Gitelman and Geoffrey Pingree.