A man in a Jesus t-shirt walks slowly down the side of the highway dragging a six-foot wooden cross on his back. A cameraman approaches. Then photographers and reporters surround him, pointing microphones in his face and peppering him with questions. It is eighty-six degrees on South State Road 63 in Terre Haute, Indiana. The road passes by the prison where Timothy McVeigh awaits execution for bombing the federal building in Oklahoma City and killing 168 people. It is Sunday, June 10 at about 12:30 P.M., the day before the scheduled lethal injection, and this lone, crossbearing protester is the biggest piece of news that has happened all day.

I have just arrived in Terre Haute, pulling my rental car onto Thomas Norris's front lawn. He has lived across the street from the penitentiary for thirty-two years and, overnight, has become a parking entrepreneur. On his lawn, there are three satellite trucks, about fifty cars, and a van selling food and drinks. He charges $1,000 for satellite trucks and $10 for cars. "I raise a garden, but I can't give my vegetables away," Norris says. "This is the most I ever made on my property." I drive onto the flattened grass and hand my $10 to Norris, who sits under a tree talking to reporters. He is one of the big interviews of the day. So is Harold Smith, from Albany, New York, another death-penalty protester, who has been standing down the road for three days holding a hand-made sign that says, "Our Jesus loves Tim even if we don't." Smith tells me that so far he has given about seventy-five interviews.

There are 1,400 journalists in Terre Haute to cover the execution. Only there isn't much to cover. "We're interviewing crazy people because there's nothing else to do," says Thomas Nilssen, a photographer for Expressen, a national daily in Sweden.

"Columbine, the Florida recount, the Unabomber, they all got media circuses," says Kevin Fagan of the San Francisco Chronicle. "But this is insane."

Media City rises up on the front lawn of the prison. Small white broadcasting tents stand about 400 yards from the brownbrick prison, carving out the perfect penitentiary backdrop for their anchors, complete with curled barbed wire glinting in the sun. Behind them are air-conditioned trailers and a long row of satellite trucks. NBC and ABC have large private tents, in which buffet meals are served. Off to the side is a large filing tent where, for about $1,200, you can get a table and chair, modem hookup, phone, and one bottle of chilled water. Inside the tent, there are colorful tablecloths and flower centerpieces. Out in the sun, journalists in sunglasses walk through the grass or lounge on beach chairs in the shade of the trees. Some have brought baseball mitts and play catch. Others drive from tent to tent in...