Rush of reporters worldwide attracts some limelight, too
It was such a scene that a Duck Boat tour leader stopped to let passengers gawk: swarms of reporters and camera operators, people carrying microphones and notebooks, running after three gay couples who, with marriage papers in hand, were stalking with determination toward the courthouse.
A cameraman crashed into a tree. A TV reporter barked into a cellphone.
On the first day of legalized same-sex marriage, media members descended on Massachusetts to chronicle it, representing news organizations from as far as Japan, London, and the Dominican Republic.
The "Today" show set up camp on Boston's City Hall Plaza. Reporters from CNN and the BBC turned out in force. The media horde grew so large that couples said they lost count of who had interviewed them.
"We've had a newspaper from Spain, a television station from Japan, People magazine, NBC, NPR, Channel 7, I can't remember the rest," said Mark Strickland, standing near the front of the line outside City Hall to apply for a marriage license with his partner, Tread Pearson. "I'd never even been interviewed before."
More than 130 reporters arrived at Boston City Hall as early as 3 a.m. yesterday to line up a row of satellite trucks and prepare for live shots as the first gay couples were allowed to wed. And that was just in Boston. Another 60 showed up in Provincetown, including ABC-TV's Ron Claiborne and "some lovely blonde woman from the `Today' show," said Patricia Fitzpatrick, Provincetown's director of tourism. She said anchor Dan Rather was scheduled to arrive in the afternoon.
In Boston, CNN's Vera Gibbons was on City Hall Plaza sipping coffee. She laid out a tale of woe: Though she had been assigned to talk on-air about the stock market, she had to report from City Hall because no one else was in CNN's Boston bureau.
After concluding that the throngs of hand-holding gay couples and rainbow banners spilling out the doorway at City Hall might make an odd backdrop for a story about stocks, she and her bosses at CNN came up with an alternate plan: a segment on financial advice for couples.
To keep order in City Hall, the mayor's press office corralled reporters in a special "holding pen" on the second floor. Competition for interviews with the first couples, and plaintiffs in the successful gay-marriage lawsuit, was fierce. Six of the plaintiffs were trailed by dozens of reporters and cameramen, as the couples went to City Hall for marriage licenses and then walked to the courthouse seeking waivers of the three-day waiting period.
In the register of probate, clerks across the office stopped and stared. Camera operators, clamoring for good angles, climbed on top of desks.
"We knew it'd be crowded, but not like this," said Denis J. Martin, an operations manager for the register of probate. Luckily, he said, the reporters' footprints on the desks would not last long: Someone was scheduled to wash them.
In Cambridge Sunday night, the couples at the front of the line grew so accustomed to media attention that they began finishing each other's sentences. At the top of the steps, a cluster of reporters crowded around two men in suits, who gave their names only as Kurt and Doug of Brookline. "This is not a dress rehearsal," Doug said earnestly to the cameras. "This is not a dry run. This is liberty and justice for all."
A moment later, at the conclusion of the interview, a fourth television crew butted in. "Excuse me, do you mind if I talk to you for a second?" the reporter asked.
But Eve Alpern, standing next to them in line, caught the reporter's attention: "They're No. 9 in line, they live in Brookline, they're getting married on Thursday. What else do you need to know?" she asked.
Sasha Talcott can be reached at stalcott@globe.com. 
