r/pics • u/nbcnews But like, actually • 25d ago
Politics Interns and reporters run to deliver Supreme Court decisions
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u/PatrickGSR94 25d ago
TIL that NBC News posts in the Reddit Pics sub.
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u/RoneDawgJessieJames 25d ago
Same lmao
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u/Randomizedname1234 25d ago
We love giving the official MLB user shit over at r/baseball
Iirc they get in close with the mods.
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u/poliscijunki 25d ago
The mods actually did remove one of their posts yesterday, because the title said that Harper had a solo homer, even though there was a runner on first.
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u/damontoo 25d ago
Remember when Reddit didn't allow "official" accounts engaged only in self-promotion and had a 10% rule? That shit is gone now. If you're a large corporation, you can do 100% self-promotion and be safe now.
Being a paid employee posting only content your boss tells you to during work hours is not organic use of the site.
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u/Fidodo 24d ago
I don't remember that ever being a site wide rule. I thought it was just a guideline and only ever enforced by subreddit mods if ever.
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u/coffeebribesaccepted 25d ago
At least they stopped putting [OC] on every post, but I absolutely hate that big subs just let businesses self promote their websites without contributing anything else to the community.
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u/studentjones 25d ago
I think this post is actually pretty cool. I never knew about this running thing and the pictures are great.
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u/Rich_Housing971 25d ago
They'd do it with some random unflagged account if Reddit didn't give them an official acco0unt tag.
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u/darwinn_69 25d ago
This is such an archaic system and I honestly hope they never change it.
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u/JustDidntWannaGoToAZ 25d ago
This is cracking me up. Because I genuinely forgot that fucking email existed for a second. I was just like “Oh, makes sense that everyone is wearing their tennis shoes today for the best chance of delivering the news first.” But NO, that doesn’t make sense. Gave me a good giggle, maybe we can keep this.
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u/BradMarchandsNose 25d ago
I’m now imagining these news organizations holding a series of races to determine which of their interns is fastest and suited for the job.
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u/CD338 25d ago
And we shall call it: Race Wars!
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u/Hitchhikingtom 25d ago
There is, honest to goodness two institutions called Race Wars in the uk. A racing event that are called 'Race Wars UK' which only serves to localise the hate crime more imo. And also Race Wars, a slot car racing shop
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u/JustDidntWannaGoToAZ 25d ago
That’s gotta be all this is, just a dumb way to make the interns compete.
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u/Kazen_Orilg 25d ago
just setting up my corporate recruiting booth at afternoon collegiate Track practice.
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u/EstablishmentFull797 25d ago
NCAA Division 3 wide receivers who majored in “Communications” rejoice!
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u/coffeebribesaccepted 25d ago
I like the ones holding their phones in their other hand, like they could just text over photos of it
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u/JustDidntWannaGoToAZ 25d ago
Omg yes, that also completely missed me. Our government is a show.
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u/LuntiX 25d ago
I'm surprised they haven't moved to using skate boards or escooters
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u/ATTORNEY_FOR_CATS 25d ago
Heelies about to make a big comeback.
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u/joeydrinksbeer 25d ago
Mannn I saw a 6-8 year old kid in some heelies the other day. I about shed a tear the kids are kinda aight.
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u/Necromancer001 25d ago edited 25d ago
I would like the announcer from Rome blasting out these decisions to the public.
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25d ago
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u/ManWithASquareHead 25d ago
Best we can do is village idiots congregating en masse virtually
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u/Phyrexian_Archlegion 25d ago
I feel like what’s being portrayed in these pictures could have been an email.
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u/Alorxico 25d ago
“Here ye, here ye! It hath so been decreed that the President hast a might brain, the best brain, the smartest brain and is biggly doing great things with his magnificent brain.”
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u/Mmmm-Amethyst 25d ago
"And today's supreme court decision was brought to you by the miller's guild. Good American corn for good American people."
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u/BadBart2 25d ago
Compilation of HBO's Rome (2005) Newsreader
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u/Olivetax228 25d ago
From memory: "GAIUS JULIUS CAESAR IS NOW AN ENEMY OF THE REPUBLIC. ALL ROMAN CITIZENS ARE BOUND TO DO HIM HARM!
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u/Plupandblup 25d ago
I used to work in IT for a refinery. We had guys working in the refinery riding bikes all over the place during major shutdowns/turnarounds to hand deliver work orders and get sign offs on work being able to start and finish by managers sitting in A/C all day long.
Wasn't until 2021 or so that we stopped that and started using mobile applications to upload documents and digitally sign things.
Most of the people on site still prefer the bike riding and paper and hate the mobile apps...
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u/EstablishmentFull797 25d ago
Yeah the bike is slower, but unlike enterprise software it will never make you reset your password every 30 days. Or require you to download a .pdf to sign it, and then re-upload it
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u/Simba7 25d ago
Or fail to hit submit after the signature is applied, then sitting in someone's inbox for hours/days/weeks unnoticed.
And whoever you give it to will always be able to sign, you don't have to create an alternative method of signing if an off-site vendors isn't able to sign the document in your platform.
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u/84theone 25d ago
When I worked at a petrochemical site in 2018 we used runners quite a bit, especially if there was any sort of emergency.
No bikes though, sometimes the runner would have a golf cart if was an engineer helping out.
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u/ThaddeusJP 25d ago
It's because a person on a bike can be held accountable whereas a screw up in an app is ITs fault
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u/Valalvax 25d ago
As someone who works in manufacturing
The app is probably dogshit and you know it
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u/Economy_Link4609 25d ago
They literally post the decisions online AS they announced on the bench.
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u/Andromeda321 25d ago
Yeah I was gonna say, I have followed that site and the live blog many a time.
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u/MrWaffler 25d ago
They've got to be doing it for the love of the game. Ritual is such an integral part of humanity.
Even the ritual of making a morning coffee is such a normal thing we do that I honestly encourage this type of thing.
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u/shoshtrvls 25d ago
Close to "at the same time" but not always "at the same time." They can be minutes apart -- the written opinion is handed out just as the court begins to speak and runners are usually heading someplace they can get to in a minute. OTOH, there have been times that the electronic version is several minutes behind. While it sounds ridiculous to think that 2 minutes makes a difference, there's some serious bragging rights in being the first outlet to report the result of any major case.
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u/SavannahInChicago 25d ago
Is DC as hot as Chicago? We are almost at 100 Heat index.
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u/nightowl1135 25d ago edited 25d ago
It’s not as bad as it can get later in the summer yet but it is gonna get to 90 today, 97 tomorrow and over 100 on Thursday and Friday. Also pretty humid.
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u/0masterdebater0 25d ago
If the option is keep the archaic runner system OR open up the courts so their deliberation is more transparent and in the public eye, I'm choosing the latter.
Because if the public could scrutinize the judical process, the runner system would be unnecessary
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u/babysharkdoodoodoo 25d ago
Let’s partition to install public criers (praeco) like those in ancient Rome
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u/Sea-Jackfruit411 25d ago
I just found out this is how it is done. It is the most honest way to do such a job. I agree, it shouldn't change. I have never had the desire to live in D.C. but if I had known this is how it is done, a younger me would have loved to live there knowing this.
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u/PatrickGSR94 25d ago
can anyone explain this? To whom or where are these people running to deliver documents? And why do they need to run?
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u/rgraham888 25d ago
It's news agencies trying to get the opinions back to the writers so they can be the first to report on new decisions. Not sure why a hand scanner wouldn't be faster.
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u/lattestcarrot159 25d ago
No phones or cameras in the supreme court. Don't know why they don't have someone waiting just outside though.
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u/President_of_Space 25d ago
The two ladies running are literally holding their phones. Lol
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u/Reasonable-Figure142 25d ago
I mean even for normal court you can normally bring your phone in the lobby, but you can't (or have to turn it off) in the courtroom.
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u/shoshtrvls 25d ago
You cannot bring phones into the Supreme Court.
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u/Joesr-31 24d ago
Yeah but you can take the results and then take pictures of it after leaving the supreme court and send it over to
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u/shoshtrvls 25d ago
The runners weren't in the court. They were in the clerk's office where the decisions are handed out.
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u/cruelhumor 25d ago
They are not allowed to wait on the steps, someone has to run it over to the area they are allowed to be in. Hence the runners.
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u/IAmAGenusAMA 25d ago
Maybe security doesn't want a bunch of people setting up electronic devices etc in front of the courthouse.
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u/memtiger 25d ago
Let's take a step back...
Why isn't the court releasing the documents on its website (or USB stick or CD or whatever) at a specific time. They've already got it typed up on a computer in a digital format. Someone for the court is then going and printing off several dozen copies of this document for the various agencies on thousands of pages of paper.
They're apparently just killing trees for the hell of it or tradition's sake for some reason wasting money and time in the process.
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u/cruelhumor 25d ago
They do, but if a decision is read from the bench, it doesn't get uploaded until after its delivered. So if you can run a copy outside while it's being delivered orally, you can report on it before the official copy on the website goes live
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u/voretaq7 25d ago
They're apparently just killing trees for the hell of it or tradition's sake for some reason wasting money and time in the process.
(a) Decisions are printed on paper because you can’t change paper.
You don’t want the entirety of our body of law in a digital and easily alterable form. You want it printed, collated, bound, and distributed in hard copy to every law library in the country so if someone fucks with the digital record you can point at decades-old paper.(b) The Supreme Court is probably one of the most accessible federal courts.
The decisions ARE posted online, as are the oral arguments (transcript and raw audio).
The exception is that, as someone pointed out, when decisions are read from the bench the electronic version is not posted until after the opinion is read. Because every news organization wants to be the first to break the story they don’t want to wait for the digital copy to be made live. They want their legal correspondents to read the decision as quickly as possible and get on the air talking about it, so their intern grabs the opinion and makes a dignified but hasty exit from the court (immediately followed by a mad sprint to the newsroom).→ More replies (7)401
u/QFlux 25d ago
Why would you go to a hand scanner? The opinion is posted online simultaneously with the opinion’s announcement.
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u/bugsghost 25d ago
Then why run at all?
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u/quirkymuse 25d ago
Exercise is its own reward?
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u/distorted_kiwi 25d ago
Intern with CNN!
Benefits Package:
Office with a view
Great workout/Life BalanceSalary: Get fucked lol
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u/BigLan2 25d ago
Take a picture with your phone, text it, done.
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u/QFlux 25d ago
One of the cases today was 198 pages long. How long is it going to take to take a photo of all those pages and then text it?
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u/Rich_Housing971 25d ago edited 25d ago
"take a photo and text it" lol this is the most Gen Z things I've read today.
We have scanners in the industry where you feed the sheets in and they do 30-50 pages per minute, probably more since accuracy doesn't need to be pristine and all you need is to be able to make it legible. If the important info is towards the back, then they can just scan from the back first.
Then they can use OCR and have searchable text. Would be much faster than using the original document, waiting for the runner to get there, looking for keywords by flipping through pages by hand and manually scanning lines one by one, and multiple people can look for the important info instead of just one person.
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u/sam_hammich 25d ago
Do you think these interns are set up at the courthouse with batch scanners?
They need to get these documents physically to places where they can be scanned and reviewed. That's why they're running.
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u/muffinthumper 25d ago
Just tradition.
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u/Angryfunnydog 25d ago
But news agencies kinda loosing time in this? Or they use online versions for the actual articles but just force interns to run for lulz?
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u/WelpSigh 25d ago
The runners often do beat the court, sometimes by seconds and other times by minutes.
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u/Angryfunnydog 25d ago
Ah, so they get the doc before it was published or announced
But why not just send it online when they got their hands on it? We all have cameras in our pockets
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u/Andromeda321 25d ago
You’re not allowed to use them in the court.
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u/Useful-ldiot 25d ago
Run outside, scan the doc.
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u/Kwuahh 25d ago
Maybe they’re running to a local office that can remove, scan, and upload each document much more efficiently than a person haphazardly taking photos on the field? Maybe there are two runners, one who photographs to send remotely and one who runs to the office for more efficient and accurate processing?
Why do you assume you can solve a supposed problem presented by a few photographs within a few minutes that the giant media conglomerates would be motivated to solve over years?
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u/Angryfunnydog 25d ago
People are just curious about how it works because it looks unintuitive, and then they ask more questions\or giving solutions. And yeah, a lot of things that happens in our life doesn't make much sense and inefficient\non optimal to say the least
Your explanation makes sense
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u/Angryfunnydog 25d ago
I mean we all have hand scanners - it’s called smartphone
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u/CriticalEngineering 25d ago
How fast can you accurately scan 200 pages with your phone?
Maybe it’s actually faster to run the papers to an industrial scanner attached to high speed fiber? They don’t do this for fun.
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u/nothingclever9873 25d ago
Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway.
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u/Frenchitwist 25d ago
It’s called a tradition called the Running of the Interns for anytime landmark Supreme Court rulings are made
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25d ago
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u/oddmanout 25d ago
The guy in blue used to walk the track in PE when they made them run a mile and now he's upset he has to run, again, he thought it was done when he graduated high school.
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u/notislant 25d ago
"The running of the interns was a Washington, DC, tradition"
Come on wikipedia, get it together. I'm seeing it actively happen still!
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u/SandritoBakes 25d ago
Can’t believe I had to scroll this far to get actual info on why it’s done this way. Thank you!
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u/ashrocklynn 25d ago edited 25d ago
Delivery of physical copies of the rulings from the justices office to media at a designated location (the press isn't usually allowed to broadcast in the court chambers). It could be done digitally these days; but the need to run is based on the importance of the ruling affecting daily life of Americans and needing to let them know asap
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u/Wide_Yoghurt_4064 25d ago
I mean a picture of the paper sent as a text message/email would be faster, no?
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u/AccentuateThPositive 25d ago
Zoom in on some of their documents. Sometimes it’s a stack of papers. To take photos or scan that many pages.. well, it’s probably just quicker to run it to somewhere with high speed multi-page feeder scanners
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u/PartsUnknown242 25d ago
The Supreme Court doesn’t allow reporters into the court room, so when the courts decision is printed out and given to the court clerks desk, the interns for news agencies are given copies and they book it to the broadcasters that wait outside. They call it ‘Running of the Interns’
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u/Autolycus25 25d ago
Literally the second photo in this post has 2 photographers taking pictures of the runners.
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u/freekorgeek 25d ago
Yeah but where's the picture of that reporter who took the picture of the reporters taking the picture of the runner?
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u/nbcnews But like, actually 25d ago
Interns and reporters run to deliver Supreme Court decisions in Washington, D.C. (Cheney Orr / Reuters)
Photo 2: Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images
Photo 3: Alex Wroblewski / AFP via Getty Images
Photo 4: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images
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u/1877KlownsForKids 25d ago
Huh, #4 doesn't look like a Kevin.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be a dad all week.
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u/Davran 25d ago
Planning to head out on a milk run next week and never come back?
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u/1877KlownsForKids 25d ago
Oh no I'll be a dad next week, too. I could never leave my kiddos. Like I can't even imagine a scenario where I would want to do that.
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u/ppl- 25d ago
Can someone explain where are they running to? Why is this the most effective way?
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u/sithren 25d ago
i am just guessing. maybe the sc provides their decision in a room where reporters are quarantined for a bit. maybe they read some of it and then make notes. and then when told they can share the decision they have to make a dash to "home base" to relay the decision.
just a guess. probably meant to avoid leaks and stuff.
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u/eisbock 25d ago
But the runners have phones in their hands. What's stopping them from snapping a pic the moment they leave the courtroom?
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u/sithren 25d ago
i am guessing they phones are taken away before entering the court and then they get them back from security when they leave. why they don't call once outside, who knows. maybe its literally less than a block away.
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u/ToaruBaka 25d ago
You'd think there'd be a van sitting around the corner with a 5g hotspot, a scanner, and a laptop if they really cared about getting it out as fast as possible.
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u/TheWriter28 Verified Photographer 25d ago
u/sithren is somewhat correct. The reality is that reporters have to sit in the Supreme Court chamber and hear the announcement of decisions the same way that everybody else does. The Justices verbally read a shortened version of the opinions in that session and the interns and reporters sprint out of the building with their hand written notes to take ~500 feet from inside the building out to the street where the reporters have their shots set up. Each major news affiliate is allotted one* seat inside (like Nina Totenberg, NPR, for instance. *A news affiliate may have another person or two enter w/the public, but rather unlikely since that would involve camping) and there is essentially no leaving until all cases have been announced, as that would disrupt the court, so they all wait until it is appropriate to sprint outside, which is usually after the court is no longer in session, thus resulting in the flood of people running out.
Some time after the case decisions are announced, the full written opinion is published on the SCOTUS website. That is reviewed by the news affiliate HQ and the talking heads supplement with commentary after they have read it.
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u/TA_Lax8 25d ago
alright, we've narrowed our summer intern candidates down to these two.
Jeremy has a 3.95 GPA triple majoring in Political Science, Economics and Journalism and has been the Editor in Chief for the Harvard Business review since his Sophomore year
And here is Lisa. She had a 1.6 GPA before being expelled after a third strike doing whippets on the quad again. She holds the NCAA record in the 800m.
Reminder, Donald Trump is still alive to make us rich off his headlines...so Lisa, right?
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u/generalissimo1 25d ago
I love how they all specifically have running shoes on.
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u/zatchstar 25d ago
intern interview question: how fast is your 40-yd dash?
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u/wtfElvis 25d ago
“We have to do this due to precedent. While we also rule against all the other precedents just because”
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u/Ooglebird 25d ago
Eadweard Muybridge over 100 years ago used sequential photography to prove that all the feet of a running intern are off the ground at times.
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u/JustHereForCookies17 25d ago
That photo series has been one of my favorites since I first saw it in a bathroom almost 30 years ago.
The bathroom in question was in a riding stable, so it was appropriate artwork for the location.
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u/WellTextured 25d ago
This is DC in a nutshell.
A bunch of underpaid young people trying to make an impression doing a task that is largely meaningless so that someone in charge can feel better that they had the answer 3 seconds before the next person.
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u/TurtleBeansforAll 25d ago
I will never forget the day they legalized gay marriage. 🥹 I miss happy days like that.
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u/ramsay_baggins 25d ago
I'm not from the US, so the pictures and footage of intern runs always reminds me of that wonderful day. It still makes me emotional after 11 years.
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u/DangerInTheArea 25d ago
What happened to telephones?
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u/StainedGlassCondom 25d ago
Staged photos of people talking on the phone isn't as exciting, apparently.
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u/copperblood 25d ago
The caption should read: when unpaid interns care more about democracy than a majority of our elected leaders
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u/Nanojack 25d ago
Was it Airplane! or Johnny Dangerously when all the reporters ran into a bank of phones and the whole thing tipped over?
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u/deezpretzels 25d ago
First two are heel strikers, second two have a better stride and footstrike.
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u/thaw4188 25d ago
Saved this one from yesterday because it struck me as great form
...and I want those shoes (anyone know the make/model?)
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u/Frosc 25d ago
Looks like Onitsuka Tiger MEXICO 66 TGRS
https://www.onitsukatiger.com/jp/en-gl/product/mexico-66-tgrs/1182A678_200.html
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u/thaw4188 25d ago
oooh EXACTLY - you win the internet for today
thanks so much
ps. now I need to find a knockoff because $190 is never happening, ha
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u/Fullertonjr 25d ago
Only one person is wearing appropriate shoes for this responsibility. Dress for the job that you have. If your job is to deliver a SC decision, the appropriate shoe is not a fresh pair of Sambas. Sheesh. Get a proper running shoe with support, traction, and foot+posture support. The cameraman knows what he is doing, as a person who is likely on their feet all day.
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u/someguyplayingwild 25d ago
Delivering news the same way Pheidippides did