Join us
the kicker

"Team" Coverage

December 1, 2008

Sign up for The Media Today, CJR’s daily newsletter.

Who made The Team? You know, The “Team of Rivals?” We’ll finally find out, at a press conference in a few minutes carried live by your preferred news source, who will play on President-Elect Obama’s much-speculated about national security team (a subset — varsity, for sure — of the larger Team Obama). After which, I suppose, CNN will retire (re-purpose?) its “National Security Team Announcement” logo. Although with all the competing team talk on CNN– “Senator Hillary Clinton expected to join Team Obama, a Team of Rivals, we’ll ask The Best Political Team whether the picks could blow up in his face” — perhaps such a logo is actually necessary.

UPDATE: Awaiting the announcement. Narrating the empty podium/blue curtain/row of flags shot on MSNBC: It will be “a team of heavyweights, a team of diverse views, and a very pragmatic team,” reports NBC News’s John Yang. Go, Team!

UPDATE: Ding! Ding! Ding! The third question into the Q&A part of the “Team of Rivals” press conference (from a reporter named “Karen”): How will Obama ensure this is a “team of rivals and not clash of rivals?” Fourth question, from ABC News’s Jake Tapper, also Team of Rivals-ish (How will you ensure they will carry out your vision when they have different visions…). Followed by another, Hillary-Clinton-specific rivalry question (What about the stuff you said about Hillary Clinton during the primary…) to which Obama replied that he “understand[s] that it’s fun for the press” to dig up quotes from the campaign…

Has America ever needed a media defender more than now? Help us by joining CJR today.

Liz Cox Barrett is a writer at CJR.