The New York Times may be struggling financially but they are experiencing boom times when it comes to White House access.

From the Politico

There used to be an old yarn in Washington that went like this:

Four journalists are sitting in the waiting room of an important government official’s office. The receptionist rings her boss to announce, “Sir, there are three reporters and a gentleman from The New York Times here to see you.”

The story is a relic of an earlier age, when the Times loomed like Olympus over elite journalism. But the mind-set is enjoying a revival in the Age of Obama.

Where George W. Bush’s team made a show of not caring about the Times, aides in this White House treat the paper with a deference that James Reston himself would have appreciated.

Young aides boast about how social networking helped President Barack Obama first win the presidency and now promotes his message outside the filter of mainstream journalism. The president grants interviews to Hispanic journalists on Univision and calls on reporters from newcomers like Huffington Post (and POLITICO) at news conferences.

But for all its new media airs, the new White House team remains in the thrall of perhaps the most emblematic old media institution of all.

Senior Obama officials during the transition posed for Times Sunday Magazine portraits and then opened the doors again with top-level access for another major magazine piece this month on health care. Midlevel officials cooperate for Times profiles detailing their key behind-the-scenes roles.

Even routine news stories buried deep inside the A-section of the Times often quote high-level sources speaking both on and off the record.

One part of Obama’s Times fixation is strategy. For all the proliferation of news outlets, Obama aides believe the paper still has an outsize ability to shape perceptions among political elites and other journalists.

But part of the relationship is more complicated, according to some close observers, flowing from a cultural affinity that makes Obamaites crave the validation that comes from being written about by the Times.

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About the author

Don Irvine
Don Irvine is Chairman of Accuracy in Media. He is active on Facebook and Twitter. You can follow him @donirvine to read his latest thoughts.

6 Comments for Obama Fixated on N.Y. Times

AARGH59

Let them be fixated.  Nobody but his “koolaid drinkers” reads that rag anymore.

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“Obamaites crave the validation that comes from being written about by the Times.”

They ought to look at the NYT’s circulation numbers and their stock price for some perspective.

Joy

Figures that they would LOVE the NYT….. The NYT is such a CORRUPT, LIBERAL piece of TRASH that the WHITE HOUSE loves this so called ‘PAPER”.

TK

Comment from the article:

“…the paper still has an outsize ability to shape perceptions among political elites and other journalists…”

This has ALWAYS been true, to one degree or another, throughout the history of the NYT – and – EVERY politician and his/her adherents gravitate to those particular media outlets that they feel will BEST (and most widely) express their particular political positions.

And, I believe the vast majority of people who incessantly rail and complain about the New York Times – have, most likely, NEVER been a REGULAR reader of the New York Times.

The NYT is like raising the minimum wage: the Democrats are always for it and the Republicans are always against it.

Que sera, sera.

loco36

We dropped our subscription years ago when we realized reading the Times meant getting an incomplete picture of the news.

As to the Times “outsizee: ability to shape perceptions, the Times is talking to the choir.

David

TK, most of us have read plenty enough of the NY Times to convince us of their liberal bias, without becoming regular subscribers.  Every time I visited a friend who reads it, just picking it up off their coffee table was enough to make my head steam.