SNOOP!

Mike Antonucci scrutinizes the teachers' unions, sparking praise from some people and scorn from others.

By Bess Keller

In the cavernous convention hall where everyone in the crowd of thousands seems to be slipping out to get a Coke, looking for a friend, or heading for the displays, Michael Antonucci sits immovable.

Hour after daylightless hour he sits, a medium-size, mustachioed man jotting notes while what the National Education Association calls "the largest democratic assembly in the world" swirls around him. He has packed a tape recorder and a pouch of trail mix, the latter so he does not have to leave the hall until business is concluded for dinner.

At NEA conventions, like this one in Dallas a year ago, Antonucci is often alone at the draped table reserved for media types, whose fickle interests and jittery habits pull them out to the corridors and away from the convention. It's a safe bet, too, that he alone is going right back to his hotel room every night of the gathering to recount the day's proceedings for a couple thousand readers, some of whom will comment to him on his...