Campaign coverage began to settle into a neat and comfortable science around the time of Theodore Roosevelt, the first big-time American politician to rationalize the handing out of news. Stepping into the White House over McKinley’s dead body, Roosevelt had given the Washington correspondents a White House pressroom for the first time; installed phones for them; held occasional news conferences in the Oval Office while his barber gave him a late afternoon shave; frequently leaked items to his favorite reporters; and had given out what were the first primitive campaign press schedules. “He made our work tons lighter,” wrote a beholden reporter aboard Teddy’s campaign train in 1904. “Whenever he returned to the car after a speech he would round us up and say, ‘Now, the next stop will be Blankville. You don’t have to bother about that; I’m going to get off the usual thing.’ Or, ‘At Dashtown, where we stop next, you’d better be on the job. I’ll have some new stuff there.’ Sometimes he would even tell us in the rough what the new stuff was to be … In this way he not only saved us useless physical and mental work, but economized our time and systematized our schedules.
What do You think about The Boys On The Bus (2013)?
