My media pass inside North Korea was a buzzworthy scoop, as were our box-office-friendly stars, Susan Prior and Peter O'Brien.
Now, at the U.S. Open, a media pass allows McPhee to go anywhere, "but things seem to have changed since 1950, and I'm not sure where anywhere might be".
They seemed to have passed the initial line of security guarding the stadium compound by scaling a 10ft high wire gate and bypassing simple temporary barriers, then running through the X-ray scanning area which the world's media pass through.
A note of friendly exasperation creeps into his voice when he ponders the psychological judgments some people – not least the media – pass on competitors who are called on to describe their feelings seconds after what can be the most stressful moment of their lives.
Two TVs per second definitely beats any performance metrics for Google's platform and, more important, Samsung has headed off Apple at the living room media pass.
For somewhere north of $1,500, they hand-select from among their well-paying members for a hot date at one of the city's chic restaurants (IJL gave me a media pass to try out the service).
