| AP |
A dump no more
More than 10 months have passed since the White House press corps left the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room and relocated across Lafayette Park to Jackson Place while the briefing room underwent renovations and improvements.
This week, the Fourth Estate begins the return leg of its round trip.
What they’ll find is a press workspace that’s even smaller than the one they left. But according to the decision makers involved at the White House Correspondents Association, it’s a more than worthwhile trade-off.
“It isn’t a perfect world,” said ABC’s Ann Compton, a WHCA board member and the incoming president. “The space will never be large enough for us to work there like our everyday office.” She said the WHCA is run as an “inclusive organization,” but “you can imagine trying to shove 39 news organizations into 30 desks.” And most reporters agree that the cramped space is worth it: The West Wing “real estate” is more valuable than having a larger room in one of the executive office buildings.
What this means is that, apart from the country’s largest papers, wire services and broadcast networks, many news outlets will have to share space as some have in the past (The Washington Examiner, for instance, will pair up with The Boston Globe). The original plan called for small countertop workstations with bolted-down stools. “It looked like something out of an Acela train car,” said WHCA President Steve Scully of C-SPAN, who nixed the idea and agreed to lose a couple of workstations instead.
Scully said the renovated room has the same essential footprint as before, but where there used to be a hatch down to the old swimming pool upon which the press room sits, there is now a stairwell (the pool now houses wiring and other high-tech gear). Storage and a much larger heating and cooling unit have also been added, so Scully contends that the space crunch is for a “legitimate reason” (he adds that “the place was a dump” before). Now, it includes outlets and Internet ports at briefing room seats and a lot of flat-screen TVs around the space.
Of course, the tight quarters shouldn’t pose a problem most days: Not every news organization shows up every day. Compton said “the real nightmare comes” in January 2009, with so many people wanting to cover the new president on a daily basis (and we hear that the various New York tabloids are among those having to share space, so a Hillary/Giuliani/Bloomberg presidency could make those particular cubicles rather frenzied and tense).
But Compton’s not sweating the 2009 rush: “By then, there will be a new president” of the WHCA, she joked. Her upcoming term begins Aug. 1 — “after the room opens,” she said. “I’m going to have it so easy” compared with Scully, whom she suggests deserves a “lifetime presidency” for his stellar work at the helm.
The press can start working from the new space on Tuesday. A ribbon cutting will take place on July 11, with the first briefing from there on July 12.
