A nervy reporter named William ("Fatty") Price planted himself at the front gate of the White House to buttonhole the President's callers as they emerged. That was in 1895 when Cleveland was President and it was the beginning of modern White House press coverage.
The history of Washington press coverage was told last week in a thorough, readable, thoughtful book* by 37-year-old Delbert Clark, manager for the last eight years of the New York Times's Washington bureau. Less sociological than Leo Rosten's The Washington Correspondents, his book traces the astounding growth of the Washington press corps from the period when two Congressional...
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