{"id":3935,"date":"2017-06-02T14:36:00","date_gmt":"2017-06-02T14:36:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/meredithcummings\/?p=3935"},"modified":"2023-09-22T19:48:35","modified_gmt":"2023-09-22T19:48:35","slug":"christi-parsons-white-house-correspondent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/yayserver.com\/meredithcummings\/2017\/06\/02\/christi-parsons-white-house-correspondent\/","title":{"rendered":"Christi Parsons: White House Correspondent"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

This article was originally published in the summer 2017 issue of Tuscaloosa Magazine as a part of their Six Intriguing People feature.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christi Parsons has interviewed many celebrities and politicians in her career, a path paved by her deep, Southern, storytelling roots. The Tuscaloosa native and former president of the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association is drawing from those roots \u2014 and her experience covering the day-to-day events of former President Barack Obama\u2019s presidency \u2014 to take a break to write a memoir.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the story of a white girl from Alabama who covers the first black president,\u201d says the University of Alabama and Yale Law School graduate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think people from the South can relate to the idea that race relations are complicated in this country, and people who say otherwise are just out of touch.\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Parsons, White House correspondent for the Los Angeles Times, says she has a unique perspective as a member of the White House press corps, which she says is composed heavily of reporters from the Northeast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI grew up in the South and went to a public university in the South. I\u2019m really different from a lot of people in the Washington press corps in that way. I always felt like I was processing the story of the first black president differently than everyone else.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

White House reporter Michael Memoli partnered with Parsons the last two years of the Obama administration, and he says that reporters can be extremely competitive in Washington, even within their own news organizations, but that Parsons was always willing to help a fellow reporter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHer Southernness definitely emerges from time to time, sometimes in more conspicuous ways than others,\u201d he said with a laugh. \u201cThe closest she will come to saying something negative about someone? She\u2019ll just say, \u201cWell, bless their heart.\u201d Whereas someone who grew up like I did, in New Jersey, we might use a four-letter word.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Parsons said the trajectory of her career was shaped by Alabamians, particularly her mother, a journalist, Marie Parsons, who retired from teaching journalism at the University of Alabama, and her late father, Joe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey raised me in a household where I was really exposed to a wide range of views about the world,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy mother is a journalist who comes at the world with a notebook and questions, and my father was a polite Southern gentleman who loved to tell stories, and he liked to listen to stories, so that\u2019s sort of an Alabama way of growing up. I think a lot of Southerners can relate to that.\u201d<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Parsons credits her UA German professors, as well as journalism professors Frank Deaver, the late Marian Huttenstine and Jim Oakley, a retired newspaper publisher.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEvery single publisher in the Alabama Press Association was an influence on me. They are brave people who believe in telling the stories about the places where they live,\u201d she said. Parsons, a former reporter for The Tuscaloosa News, said her father could sit on their porch for hours regaling the neighborhood with stories.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf you poured some iced tea or whiskey in a jar, you knew if you sat down near his rocking chair he would start telling a story. I was always aware of the impact of my storytelling. You can hurt people and you can help people, and sometimes people don\u2019t like what you write, but if you have to face those people at the Piggly Wiggly or church or whatever, then you learn the importance of getting it right. The town of Tuscaloosa taught me how to be a journalist.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Memoli said that when Parsons was elected president of the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association, no one ran against her because \u201cthey knew she was going to beat everybody because of the respect people have for her.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And sometimes, he pointed out, the politicians she covered learned from her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cShe happened to be on Air Force One the day after she was elected president, and it was the same year Obama was running for re-election. He came back to congratulate her and asked for her advice,\u201d Memoli said.<\/h3>\n\n\n\n

\u201cHe was kidding, of course,\u201d said Parsons, who holds a note in history as being the reporter to ask the last question at Obama\u2019s final presidential press briefing. \u201cHe knew a journalist like me would never actually give advice. But when you cover someone for 20 years, you do develop a strong reporter-source relationship in which you can joke around a little bit. The important thing to me is that he would always take my questions. No matter where we’re traveling in the world or what the subject matter was, if he saw my hand up or heard me shouting out a question, he would usually stop and answer.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This article was originally published in the summer 2017 issue of Tuscaloosa Magazine as a part of their Six Intriguing People feature. Christi Parsons has interviewed many celebrities and politicians in her career, a path paved by her deep, Southern, storytelling roots. The Tuscaloosa native and former president of the White House Correspondents\u2019 Association is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":3955,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[214],"tags":[260],"class_list":["post-3935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news-features","tag-tuscaloosa-magazine"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nChristi Parsons: White House Correspondent » Meredith Cummings: Journalist, Educator, Nonprofit Director<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"noindex, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Christi Parsons: White House Correspondent » Meredith Cummings: Journalist, Educator, Nonprofit Director\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This article was originally published in the summer 2017 issue of Tuscaloosa Magazine as a part of their Six Intriguing People feature. 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