SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This weekend, the White House press corps lost an icon.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON: Mark Knoller.
MARK KNOLLER: Mr. President, while you're waiting...
DETROW: Longtime CBS News reporter Mark Knoller spent decades in the White House briefing room covering president's George H.W. Bush through Trump.
STEVEN PORTNOY: He was known by his colleagues and his competitors for bellowing out the news as he would record his radio pieces in the shared workspaces that we call press filing centers all over the world.
DETROW: Steven Portnoy is with ABC News now but spent years working alongside Knoller at CBS. He says Knoller made his mark by pressing White House officials for seemingly basic behind-the-scenes details.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
KNOLLER: Aside from rallies and fundraising, what other kinds of campaign activities is the president engaging in that we don't know about because they're not done in public?
DETROW: Knoller took the accounting to a level no other reporter could comprehend. He tracked everything about presidents, from how often they golfed to the states they visited to the words they used, and he kept track in digital files he maintained for decades. The data informed Knoller's reporting and the rest of the press corps' as well.
PORTNOY: If there was ever a question among reporters about how things were being done at the White House, people would turn to Mark Knoller and ask, hey, Mark, is this normal? Mark believes strongly in a president's prerogative to shape the contours of his office but also in the press' responsibility to document those changes for history.
DETROW: Mark Knoller was 73 years old. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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