Who will get questions tonight?

President Obama's first press conference starts at 8 p.m., but during the transition period from after the election through Jan. 9, he took 62 questions as president-elect during 15 news conferences.

I blogged often about him taking a record number of questions back then. He'll take about 45 minutes of questions tonight, and media organizations from The Washington Times to Salon to ABC to AOL News are getting in place and readying their queries in hopes POTUS calls on them.

Though Obama strayed from tradition in those early newsers, White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs has followed it pretty closely. That means first question AP, then the other wires and networks before expanding the questions to the field.

Here's a quick trip down memory lane from how many questions Obama took during the transition and from which outlets.

Nov. 7 - 9 questions
Nov. 24 - 6
Nov. 25 - 4
Nov. 26 - 3
Dec. 1 - 6
Dec. 3 – 3
Dec. 7 – 3
Dec. 11 – 4
Dec. 15 – 3
Dec. 16 – 4
Dec. 17 – 3
Dec. 18 – 4
Dec. 19 – 3
Jan. 7 – 3
Jan. 9 – 4

He took six questions from Reuters news agency, five questions each from the Associated Press, Bloomberg and CBS and four questions from NBC.

He has fielded three questions each from ABC, CNN, New York Times, Chicago Tribune and Wall Street Journal.

He has taken two questions each from Politico, Chicago Sun-Times, the Chicago ABC affiliate, National Public Radio, Washington Post and USA Today.

He also has taken one question each from the Chicago NBC affiliate, Fox, Telemundo, Univision, McClatchy, Los Angeles Times, New York Daily News, Des Moines Register, Denver Post and Ebony Magazine.

Jon Ward will be in our seat tonight, Joe Curl is on hand for his theater column and I'll be live-blogging from here.

— Christina Bellantoni, White House correspondent, The Washington Times

Please bookmark my blog at
http://www.washingtontimes.com/weblogs/bellantoni

Find my latest stories here, follow me on Twitter and visit my YouTube page