The Media Keeps Circling the Drain

Did you notice who did and did not get picked for a question in last night’s presidential press conference? Here are the winners:

Associated Press
NBC
ABC
CBS
Univision
Stars and Stripes
CNN
Fox News
Politico
Ebony
ABC Radio
Washington Times
AFP

Note who did NOT get called: The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, USA Today, Los Angeles Times, etc – not a single leading daily paper. That’s gotta hurt these places, many of whom are already on life support. I’ve blogged many times about the media’s problems, including here and here.

When a president does a press conference, he usually has a chart stating who is attending and where they are sitting so he can choose who to ask. Remember this was a one hour conference with 13 selected questions, and since Obama likes to give long answers you’ve got a little over 4½ minutes per question. He can freely decide who to ask and who to ignore. Did Obama decide to ignore the daily papers because of their growing obsolescence, or was it an accidental oversight? May the conspiracy theories begin, but you know what I think.

I actually like some of these choices – Univision is the network of choice for the country’s fastest growing minority, Stars & Stripes is a wise selection and Politico is one of the rare media outlets that is actually growing because they're on to something. And by including Fox News and the Washington Times you can’t say he only chose places that would throw softballs. And except for Ann Compton at ABC Radio, all the questions were pretty good.

I am confident predicting that in the next couple of years the president will return to his high-tech outreach that worked well during the campaign, and conduct some webcasts and online-only exchanges with the public. I know I disparaged Twitter below, but grassroots mobilization for elections lends itself well to online social media as more industries realize you don’t need the media to be the messenger anymore. Everyone but the daily papers get that.