Washington Post Reporter Slams Mike Allen For Taking White House ‘New Media Seat’ – After Telling Reporters ‘Never’ Go To Briefings

Washington Post journalist Natalie Allison slammed Axios executive editor Mike Allen for taking up the “new media seat” at the first Trump administration White House Presser after claiming, alongside his outlet’s co-founder Jim VandeHei, that his organization “beg” their reporters “never” to go to a briefing.

During Tuesday’s press briefing, Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said that the Trump administration would be making an effort to offer a seat to a variety of media outlets and not just “legacy media” typically found at briefings.

She told those gathered: “The Trump White House will speak to all media outlets and personalities, not just the legacy media who are seated in this room… It’s essential to our team that we share President Trump’s message everywhere and adapt this White House to the new media landscape in 2025.”

Leavitt gave Allen the opportunity to ask the first question after her initial address, which he used to ask her about Chinese AI Deepseek and the AI development in the US. The press secretary responded and received a further question from Breitbart Washington bureau chief Matthew Boyle.

Allison, however, took to X to criticize Allen’s appearance at the briefing citing an interview he gave just two weeks ago to Vanity Fair in which he said there was “no news to be had” at a briefing.

The journalist posted a screengrab from the interview, which read:

VandeHei and Allen say they’d rather their staff not be in the briefing room at all. “We tell our reporters across all topics, ‘If you look around and there are two or more other reporters there, you can leave,” Allen tells me. “There’s no news to be had.”

“Where the press operation sits or what they say or do about the reporters is really meaningless to us if our reporters are doing their job,” VandeHei says, adding, “We beg our reporters to never go to a White House press briefing…. That’s a good chunk of your day lost.”

Axios Comms, meanwhile, shared footage of Allen’s appearance.