The White House press briefing grew out of a reporter loitering at the gates
In the 1890s, a young reporter named William Price, hoping to land a newspaper job, simply stationed himself outside the White House and questioned visitors as they came and went. Rivals copied him, and the White House beat was born. Within a few decades reporters had desks inside, and daily briefings were routine.
Today the press secretary is the executive branch's chief spokesperson, gathering information across the administration, responding to world events and briefing the press corps, usually every day. The job is filled by presidential appointment without Senate confirmation, yet the daily exposure makes it one of the most visible posts outside the Cabinet.
Early presidents needed nothing of the kind. Congress funded White House staff only after Lincoln's time, and Grant's official team numbered six people. Relations with the press were cosy: before the Government Printing Office existed, friendly papers won federal printing contracts. Lincoln's private secretary John Nicolay, a former Illinois newspaper owner, handled reporters occasionally. By 1884, though, the country's population had grown from 2.5 million at independence to 56 million and daily newspapers numbered more than 1,200.
Grover Cleveland felt the change personally when reporters trailed him and his 21-year-old bride Frances Folsom to their honeymoon at Deer Park, Maryland, in 1886. His secretary Daniel Lamont, a former editor, tried to manage them. In Cleveland's second term, the stenographer George Cortelyou won reporters' respect. Around the Spanish-American War of 1898, McKinley's White House invited journalists inside and gave them room to work, and Theodore Roosevelt made the arrangement permanent by including press space in his new West Wing, later home to the James S. Brady briefing room.
The modern briefing took shape under Woodrow Wilson. His private secretary Joseph Tumulty persuaded the press-shy president to engage and began holding morning briefings attended by up to thirty reporters. He also clarified embargo rules, noting exactly when a story could be released. That routine laid the foundation for the daily briefing still held today.
Source: White House Press Secretary
