Managing the Press re-examines the emergence of the twentieth-century media President, whose authority to govern depends largely on his ability to generate public support by appealing to the citizenry through the news media. From 1897 to 1933, White House successes and failures with the press established a foundation for modern executive leadership and helped to shape patterns of media practices and technologies through which Americans have viewed the presidency during most of the twentieth century.

Stephen Ponder shows how these findings suggest a new context for such issues as mediated public opinion and the foundations of presidential power, the challenge to the presidency by an increasingly adversarial press, the emergence of "new media" formats and technologies, and the shaping of twenty-first century presidential leadership.