It was easy to get lost in the crowd at almost any campaign event in Iowa this week, and that was just among the press.

Over 2,500 media personnel received credentials at the Polk County Convention Complex in downtown Des Moines, where incoming caucus results were broadcast over a huge bank of television screens, CNN reported Thursday. Events like Barack Obama's 10 p.m. rally Wednesday at a Des Moines high school played out like a cliché movie scene, as correspondents from around the world broadcast directly alongside each other in a variety of languages.

Even the town library in tiny Indianola, Iowa, where we had finally found a wireless Internet connection earlier that day, played host to the press when a FOX News crew stopped in to film an interview with an undecided caucus-goer.

At the overcrowded John McCain rally that night, Jamie Manley said he was slightly disgusted by the pervasiveness of the press in Iowa. But media attention has its moments: ABC anchor George Stephanopoulos and NBC anchors Tim Russert and Brian Williams all showed up at the event.

"When you're behind the cameras, it's a different perspective," Manley noted from his spot in back of a raised platform of TV cameras that blocked half the audience's view of the podium.