It was announced today that former Time magazine reporter Jay Carney will be the White House's new Press Secretary. Currently the communications director for Joe Biden, Carney was selected to replace the Robert Gibbs, who announced his departure from the job to mixed reactions earlier this month. Once in charge of covering the political debate as the Washington Bureau Chief for Time, Carney will now apparently seek moderate the press' influence. Some early reactions from the web.

• Carney Polished Biden’s Image   "I think Carney deserves the credit for the many Biden profiles, humanizing but never-newsmaking (in the sense that they generated no gaffes), in magazines -- The Atlantic's Mark Bowden piece, big take-outs in GQ and Esquire, the Newsweek cover 'Joe's No Joke,'" says David Weigel on Slate.

• The Right Is Going to Be All Over This  "You can bet the choice is going to be red meat to right-wingers who rail on MSM bias. Want evidence the MSM is in the Democratic Party’s pocket? Look whom the party appoints as its highest-level spokesperson," ventures Joel Meares at the Columbia Journalism Review. He goes on to quote some passages of a contentious interview between Carney and colleague Michael Scherer with John McCain before the election in 2008.

• The Other Side Of the Fence  "Just two years ago, Time Washington bureau chief Jay Carney was fending off criticism for jumping ship from the Fourth Estate to the liberal establishment," brings up Chris Rovzar New York Magazine. "He left journalism after twenty years at Time to serve as communications director for Vice-President Joe Biden. Now he'll be facing the biggest guns from his former media compatriots."

• ‘A Nonpartisan Spokesman,’ notes Politico's Ben Smith about Carney's philosophy of his own role. "That is the tone the White House is now going for; it also feels out of another era a bit."

• Carney Has Already Helped With the White House's Message "Carney has played a key role in developing the administration's post-stimulus messaging," says Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic. "The extent of his relationship with Obama is unclear. He'll have the advantage of having been colleagues--competitively or as part of the same organization--with many journalists across the podium."
  

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Eli Rosenberg