WH Team Shifts Focus to Outside the Beltway Media Outlets

newspaperwall1_photo

President Obama recalled the mojo of the campaign trail Monday when he invoked his "Yes We Can" to reassure nervous Democrats that the battle to pass health care reform this year is not lost.

But this wasn't the only invocation of campaign magic at the White House Monday. The press shop, recalling a campaign tactic meant to focus attention on non-Washington coverage, taped copies of the front pages of newspapers from across the country on the biggest wall in their West Wing haunt.

The wall is just outside Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest's office and the photocopied front pages (so 20th Century) are immediately visible to any reporter who saunters into the lower press office - the one down the hall from Robert Gibbs' office.

Earnest told Fox a White House "associate" named Patrick (the Obama White House calls interns "associates," not interns - Wal-Mart holding on line one), taped the copies of the front pages to the wall. Patrick or other unnamed associates will continue to do so for the foreseeable future, he said.

It's a reminder, Earnest said, to press aides that newspapers OUTSIDE the Beltway cover news differently and that this audience - the one outside the circulation zone of the Washington Post, for example - is as important to governing as it was to campaigning.