First Lady prefers local reporters to White House press corps p. 16

By: M.L. Stein

IF SHE HAS a choice, Hillary Rodham Clinton prefers to be interviewed by local and regional reporters rather than the White House press corps.
The hometown journalists are better prepared, she said.
The first lady offered her views on the subject during a question-and-answer period following her luncheon speech on health care reform at the Newspaper Association of America convention in San Francisco.
She was asked to pinpoint the most significant difference between the Washington press and local and regional reporters.
"I'll tell you if it doesn't leave this room," she joked in an address to several hundred NAA members in the ballroom of the Fairmont Hotel.
In her travels around the country, Clinton said she found that local and regional reporters often asked "more substantive, more penetrating" questions than their counterparts in Washington.
"Reporters who have interviewed me have taken to heart their preparation," she said. "They often come in with reams of questions and all kinds of backup material. I genuinely enjoyed encounters with them. I feel the interest they brought to the interview was deeply rooted."
Washington correspondents, on the other hand, have a "different responsibility," Clinton opined.
"They are driven mercilessly by 24-hour news coverage and are victims of it," she observed. "They are constantly on the run and there is a hit-and-run sense about their questions."
Still, she added, she has a better understanding of the media's role than in the days preceding Bill Clinton's presidential campaign.
She admitted that she didn't have much experience with press conferences until then and found it difficult "to know how accurate a picture" the conferences reflected.
Despite her preference for local news gatherers, "I will try to work with and cooperate with both," the first lady said.