More on a West Wing Press Room Re-Do

In a completely disinterested story, Jim VandeHei reports today on how his offices might soon get an upgrade. Coming a good 13 days after the Washington Times reported the same thing, and three weeks after Fishbowl first “broke” the story of the sub-par working conditions, VandeHei updates with some history of the briefing room struggle and President Bush’s comments about room, and explains the plan would move the press corps out of the West Wing for a few weeks (probably August) to redo the room.

“My only concern is they use this as a Trojan horse to kick us out or shrink our space,” Ron Hutcheson told the Post. “I am in the trust-but-verify mode. There is nothing in there that sets off the alarms that there is a nefarious plan here.”

Even the President has noticed has bad the working conditions are, as VandeHei notes, quoting POTUS at a recent press conference: “Listen, whoever thought about modernizing this room deserves a lot of credit. Like, there’s very little oxygen in here anymore.” And you know things have to got to be really bad for President Bush to start doing favors for the press corps….

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