Obama keeps newspaper reporters at arm’s length

“Entertainment Tonight” scored one last year. The New York Times did not.

“The View” has gotten several. The Washington Post hasn’t had one in years.

Albuquerque radio station KOB-FM’s “Morning Mayhem” crew interviewed him in August. The last time the Wall Street Journal did so was in 2009.

America’s newspapers have trouble enough these days, what with shrinking ad revenue and straying readers. But the daily print-and-pixel press also hasn’t gotten much love lately from the biggest newsmaker in the business: President Obama.

When Obama does media interviews these days, it’s not with a newspaper. TV gets the bulk of the president’s personal attention, from his frequent appearances on “60 Minutes” to MTV to chitchats with local stations around the country. Magazines — including the New Republic, which recently landed an interview conducted by its owner, Facebook co-founder and former Obama campaign operative Chris Hughes — are a distant second, followed by radio.

Newspapers? Well, Obama may be the least newspaper-friendly president in a generation.

TV interviews enable the president to take his message directly to a wide number of viewers, largely free of the “filter” that a print interview may entail. On TV, after all, the president rarely contends with contradictory comments from opponents or the shades-of-gray context about an issue that newspaper and online stories often offer.

White House officials “have been fairly clear that broadcast interviews are a more valuable venue for them,” said David Lauter, Washington bureau chief of the Tribune Co.’s newspaper group, which includes the Los Angeles Times, Baltimore Sun, Chicago Tribune and Orlando Sentinel. “We’ve had several conversations with them during the campaign. . . . Ultimately, their feeling was, if it doesn’t have a broadcast component, they’re not very interested.”

White House press secretary Jay Carney says it’s nothing personal. Without addressing newspapers specifically, Carney said in an e-mail that Obama’s interviews are doled out based on “the best use of the president’s time. . . . He’s done TV and print, and will continue to do both.”

But Dee Dee Myers, President Bill Clinton’s first press secretary, said Obama’s lack of interest in newspapers also reflects a changing media ecosystem. “Newspapers increasingly reach smaller audiences,” she said. What’s more, “they’re edited. You have a lot less control” over the message.

Obama was stingy with newspaper interviews when he first came to the White House in 2009, but the well has nearly dried up since the 2010 midterm election. He spoke with USA Today and the Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk during the campaign last year and had an off-the-record talk (later made public) with the Des Moines Register’s editorial board in October.

Each of those interviews had strategic value. USA Today is a national paper with the second-largest circulation (after the Wall Street Journal). The Virginia and Iowa papers are in states that were critical to Obama’s reelection chances. (Despite the rare interviews, the Register endorsed Mitt Romney for president; the Pilot made no endorsement).

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