Funny Or Die | The Washington Post
President Obama’s interview with Zach Galifianakis, a plug for Healthcare.gov, shows how he has “not only grasped the shifting media landscape but also moved to take advantage of the changes,” Chris Cillizza writes.
The Washington Post hasn’t had an interview with Obama since 2009, Cillizza notes, and The New York Times hasn’t sat down with him since last summer (though inexplicably, it never asked him about government surveillance of journalists — “why couldn’t it at least take a stab at the hottest topic of the moment?” Times Public Editor Margaret Sullivan wondered aloud).
Obama has recently spoken with Charles Barkley, Steve Harvey, Grantland Editor-in-Chief Bill Simmons and Bill O’Reilly, Cillizza writes. “The growth of non-traditional media — from Huffington Post to The Daily Show to 1,000 other offshoots covering pieces and parts of the news cycle — allows this president to pick his spots and his audiences in ways that were unthinkable even for George W. Bush.”
Last year, the Post’s Paul Farhi wrote about Obama’s cold shoulder: He “may be the least newspaper-friendly president in a generation,” he wrote.
The Galifianakian strategy worked, according to White House adviser Tara McGuinness:
http://t.co/FrO24hdvcA is the #1 source of referrals to http://t.co/0r93BavlrV right now.
— Tara McGuinness (@HealthCareTara) March 11, 2014
Related: President Obama, media critic, dislikes ‘false balance’
Comments