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# White House Press Corps Grows to Cover President Trump
- URL: https://capitolcommunicator.com/white-house-press-corps-grows-to-cover-president-trump/
- Published: 2017-03-07T22:43:18.000Z
- Updated: 2021-10-22T23:49:58.000Z
- Author: Capitol Communicator
- Tags: Media, Insights, #Import 2026-10-08 18:48

**With President Trump making news almost round-the-clock,** media outlets have increased the number of reporters assigned to the White House.

According to [The Washington Post](https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/erik-wemple/wp/2017/03/06/can-president-trump-outlast-the-white-house-press-corps/?utm%5Fterm=.3fd3c434783f&ref=capitolcommunicator.com), “Outlets such as Politico — with seven White House reporters — and The Post and the New York Times — six apiece — (have) upped their White House staffing to historic levels. The early weeks (of the Trump administration) raise questions as to whether those deployments will be sufficient. “I think we’re okay,” says Elisabeth Bumiller, the Washington bureau chief for the New York Times. Bumiller was one of two White House reporters in the early days of the George W. Bush administration. That number reached four during the Obama administration — “that’s really because of the demands of the Web,” she says.

“Now there’s the Web and there’s Trump, working together. “It’s the demands of the beat,” says Bumiller. “It is completely unpredictable, as you’ve seen, and it’s relentless and we’re also in uncharted territory. We’ve never covered this kind of a president before.” To properly shadow this kind of a president, the New York Times puts two people per day on White House coverage, the better to ensure that there’s someone on the beat from 6 a.m. till midnight. Those folks have what’s called a “duty week” — seven days of breaking-news coverage of Team Trump — after which they rotate into less of a spot-news role and focus on enterprise reporting on the White House.

“The Post has a similar approach, with two people per day tag-teaming the news from the White House. One is generally at the White House itself, while the other occupies the so-called “hot seat” in The Post’s newsroom.

“At Politico, Trump’s presidency has saddled the breaking-news desk with considerable responsibilities, including taking screen shots. Just in case Trump decides to delete or edit tweets — say, to clear up spelling problems — that desk is charged with taking pictures of each one, according to Karey Van Hall, Politico’s managing editor for news. What no one can predict, however, is what those tweets may target. Though there was some expectation, says Van Hall, that Trump might tweet about “The Apprentice” in light of Friday’s news that Arnold Schwarzenegger would be leaving the show, “what was not quite as predictable was that he had such a bold accusation against Obama,” says Van Hall, who adds that “for two weeks we had not really had some really bold statement on Twitter.””