The Girls on the (party) Bus: 5 secrets about political reporters

New York Times journalist Amy Chozick (co-creator of The Girls on the Bus) spent more than 10 years covering US politician Hillary Clinton’s efforts to become President, following her around the country during her campaign trails for the 2008 and 2016 elections. Amy detailed her absurd, enlightening, and often frustrating experiences in her memoir Chasing Hillary. 

As an aspiring reporter, Amy was obsessed with the book The Boys on the Bus by Timothy Crouse, which was filled with wild tales of his life on the 1972 US election campaign trail with fellow Rolling Stone journalist Hunter S Thompson. While the series includes Hunter (played by PJ Sosko) as a kind of spirit guide to journalist Sadie McCarthy (Melissa Benoist), Amy found her own experiences sharply different from Hunter and Timothy’s. Thank advances in technology, the relentless 24-hours news cycle, and the presence of women on the campaign trail, both as candidates like Felicity Walker (Hettienne Park) who’s looking to become the first-ever female US President, and reporters like Sadie’s new friends (and rivals), seasoned print reporter Grace (Carla Gugino), social media influencer and viral moment-hunter Lola (Natasha Behnam), and Kimberlyn (Christina Elmore) a Black, Fox News-style conservative reporter.

Together, in The Girls on the Bus, they’re about to lose their illusions. “Too many journalism movies and TV shows adopt this holier-than-thou tone,” Amy wrote Vanity Fair. “Why can’t journalists be human? Why can’t we be honest? Flawed? Those are the journalists I wanted to portray. The ones who are rushed, sloppy, irritated (and yes, irritating) … and alive.” 

Instead of a tale of heroic adventures, The Girls on the Bus reveals what really happens when you force hard-working journalists into enclosed spaces for long periods for what turns out to be an increasingly hopeless mission – from sandwich hoarding, to punch-ups over the last juice box, to the unlikeliest friendships. 

We’ve picked out five surprising truths Amy revealed about life aboard the campaign bus in her book, and in the show.

Stream The Girls on the Bus S1 on Showmax. New episodes Wednesdays at 20:30. 

1. Your personal life is on pause

No, seriously. In real life, Amy spoke to her gynaecologist about freezing her eggs, and took having kids off the table so that she would be in a position to go on the campaign trail following Hillary Clinton in the run-up to her 2016 campaign tour. 

In the series, Kimberlyn finds herself being driven to distraction by her fiancé Eric (Kyle Vincent Terry) pestering her about wedding plans, which comes to a head in episode 3. When Eric crashes what’s supposed to be a rare moment of time off for Kimberlyn, he thinks he’s being romantic. Instead his gesture piles on the stress, since Kimberlyn is already using the time to prepare for a rare, unexpected career opportunity. The storyline is loosely based on Amy’s struggles with wedding planning during the 2008 Clinton campaign.

2. You see politics at its pettiest

The Girls on the Bus gives us Veep-style look at politics at its nit-pickiest and pettiest. For Amy, it was a depressing experience seeing “jokes” getting workshopped until every drop of humour was squeezed out, and every possible offence that could be taken was countered. It just made it worse when she saw that same “joke” repeated by a politician with a plastered-on smile at every stop along the campaign trail. Aside from this, Amy observed endless, ongoing debates about the minutia, like what a candidate could be seen eating. Were chicken wings “good optics?” During Amy’s time on the bus, she recorded conversations around whether the press had ever seen Hillary consuming a burrito before. Imagine an inescapable, month-long debate that would make you long for the variety and novelty offered by a small child singing Ten Green Bottles. 

3. The bus is both gross and pointless

At the start of the 2016 Clinton campaign trail, reporters were given slots aboard the fancy press bus, complete with TVs over every third row, boxed lunches and bottled water prepared for everyone, and plug points under every seat. It was a fully charged battle bus, ready to roll. 

Well, that illusion of efficiency soon crumbled. The bus toilet ran out of hand sanitiser and started to smell. Reporters took to referring to the back seats of the bus near the toilets and the trash as the “landfill”, where they banished new reporters. 

Amy revealed that as well as being stinky, the bus was a trap. The 2016 Clinton campaign frequently left journalists to chase after them when Hillary and her staffers flew to the next town over while the bus limped behind, sometimes not even making it to venues in time to cover rallies. In those moments, the press corps had to rely on the same livestreams of the rallies that their colleagues back home could watch in the comfort of the office. 

Subsisting on a diet of junk food, Justin Bieber music, and stress during 18-hour days on the road after brief nights in random motel rooms – all seemingly for nothing – reporters turned feral. “We reverted to becoming tweens,” Amy wrote in her book. “The bus almost abandoned us in Vinton after we couldn’t pull ourselves away from the Fast and the Furious arcade game at the roller-skating rink where Hillary spoke.” 

4. You don’t get access

According to Amy’s account, by the time of the 2016 tour, Hillary’s staff treated the press corps like the campaign bus septic tanks. In Chasing Hillary, she referred to the bus as a “leper colony on wheels”, and Hillary’s press aides as “The Guys”, revealing that they lashed out aggressively at reporters for any perceived negative reporting on their candidate. Despite being on the trail specifically to cover Clinton, Amy had 57 interview requests turned down and was even left out of general press briefings. 

No one who was authorised to speak for the Clinton campaign ever travelled aboard the press bus – not even the so-called “travelling press secretary”. And Amy revealed in her book that one Clinton team aide even chose to travel seated on the toilet lid in the Clinton campaign’s charter plane rather than go slumming with the press for the trip between Iowa City and Ottumwa.

Faced with a candidate who refused to speak, and desperate for news, Amy focussed her efforts on writing about Russian hackers breaching the Democratic National Committee server and leaking emails – which gave the opposition their rallying cry, “But her emails”. 

“Sometimes we take the bait. Sometimes we write it just for the likes. Sometimes we inadvertently help get a despot elected, because he returns our calls and makes for good copy,” Amy ruefully admitted in one Vanity Fair interview. 

5. None of it is breaking news

Forget researching and crafting an epic story spiced with leads gleaned from loose-lipped politicians and aides, buttered up during expense account dinners and drinks. That world of The Boys on the Bus was long gone, along with their deep expense accounts. To hear Amy tell it, covering the presidential race became a rat race in which the first rat to post on social media won, and journalists posted 15 “stories” per day to meet demand. 

“On the bus, my whole body and my journalism atrophied … I hardly made any phone calls or talked to anyone outside my fellow Travelers. I lost my will to protest when editors only wanted me to send colour and quotes that would be melded (or not) into a roundup Frankenstory … I didn’t even complain when the Travelers had to sit on our bus outside as Hillary answered questions about Israel. The campaign said the space was too tight to accommodate her travelling press corps,” Amy revealed.

In The Girls on the Bus, though, Amy got to live her dream, writing in a scene in which Sadie manages to sneak an impromptu interview with candidate Walker when she catches her alone at a restaurant in episode 2 – something she admits would never happen in real life. If you can’t report on reality, make it up!

Stream The Girls on the Bus S1 on Showmax. New episodes Wednesdays at 20:30. 

Also watch: Love a little dirty, sexy politics? Read more about The Regime S1, Veep S1-7, Cobra S1-2, White House Plumbers S1, and more on Showmax.