Pour One Out for the Legacy Media Outlets Who Can't Book Joe Biden

One of life's great joys is realizing that you are actually not obligated to obsess over every single thing a politician does, so I will admit that it's entirely possible that President Joe Biden has been cagey and tough-to-pin down for sitdown interviews. Anecdotally, it does seem like he's out there pretty regularly answering questions himself and that's been a change from the previous four years. But then again The Big Lead does not have the resources and dedicated staff to cover this stuff like the Big Three newspapers, who are apparently striking out right and left in their efforts to score a chat with Biden. One thing they could try to do is be more like theSkimm newsletter, a thing that exists and did, in fact, publish a question-and-answer session with the president Tuesday morning.

From today's Politico newsletter (what's the deal with all of these newsletters):

SKIMM-PING ON INTERVIEWS: Biden has yet to sit for interviews with The New York Times, Washington Post, or The Wall Street Journal, so we were impressed when theSkimm newsletter published a Q-and-A with the president Tuesday morning in which he responded to readers’ questions.

It’s not clear how the interview was actually conducted and if Biden or his press team was responsible for the answers. Asked how they verified it was actually the president responding, a spokesperson for Skimm said “I can confirm that these responses for theSkimm's Q&A were provided by President Joe Biden's office.” The White House press team publicly has said Biden took the questions.

This is great. If you go to The Skimm right now the Biden piece is atop a carousel touting similarly excellent blogs about candles that are worth the money, some sales to shop this week, and an upcoming Whitney Cummings comedy special.

Legacy media has such a decided advantage is access and that comes with an undercurrent of entitlement. Look no further than the doubts cast that this Skimm Q&A was on the up-and-up.

Score one for the little guy. A well-deserved tip of the cap for the get.