Well, that took like a nanosecond. 

White House reporters covering President-elect Joe Biden’s transition and anticipating following his every move once he reaches 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue have begun grumbling about a less than volcanic flow of information from Team Biden in Wilmington. Ok, so it’s just one (albeit influential) reporter doing the grumbling. 

But still – mark our words. It won’t take long for others in the White House press corps to take up Politico reporter Ryan Lizza’s mantle. He’s arguing that as Team Trump exits the scene having busted norms all through their four years in town, “it’s equally— maybe more— important to aggressively document what Trump-established norms the new party in power will quietly hope to preserve,’’ including a focus on press access and relations.

And we agree. Each presidential administration claims to change things drastically from their predecessor, and they usually do when it comes to policy. 

But in the area of flowing information to the public via the media that cover presidents like a rug, every one not only adopts but typically takes further the information-squelching press-wrangling habits of those that went before. It will be telling to watch how Biden walks this particular trajectory. 

Meanwhile, over at the Trump White House, things are getting pretty snarky in the perennial pool report wars. This very DC-insider topic rears up with a vengeance every few years, the product of shrinking news budgets colliding with those same controlling tendencies possessed by every single White House we’ve seen.