DAVID MARCUS: Karoline Leavitt’s lasting legacy is opening the White House to indie press

At the end of the month, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt will end a tenure that many consider to be one of the best in the 97-year history of the office.

Importantly, she will leave something behind — a vital legacy of opening the briefing room to independent media.

Leavitt handled her office with grace and dexterity, no mean feat for someone communicating for President Donald Trump , who talks more than a morning radio disc jockey.

Somehow, she was never in front of his messaging, but also never far behind.

As a queen of cool, Leavitt could not be flustered.

She always had an air of confidence and, dare I say, levity.

Even when her occasional jocular barbs were tossed at reporters, they rarely turned into acrimony.

SCRAMBLE FOR KAROLINE LEAVITT'S REPLACEMENT ENSUES WITH JUST WEEKS UNTIL TRUMP'S SPOKESPERSON EXITS Beyond serving as a model for future press secretaries, Leavitt’s strongest legacy will be her commitment to opening up the White House media ecosystem to small indie news outlets and even social media influencers .

Every press conference opens with a question from the "new media seat," a practice that was much maligned early on by fussy old legacy outlet reporters who rolled their eyes at these commoners gaining entry to their fancy club.

I recall a friend of mine, who was new to the briefing room, telling me of an old regular huffing and puffing and saying, "This is where I stand, you have to move!" She did not move.

WHITE HOUSE PUSHED FOR PROTOCOL TO PRESERVE CORRESPONDENTS' CREDIBILITY AFTER TRUMP'S SECRET PLANE SWITCH How gauche it was, having mere bloggers or TikTok personalities with this kind of access to the most powerful office in the world.

But Leavitt understood that in today’s media, those voices now have as much purchase as major newspapers once did.

It was bumpy at times; the early rollout of binders with files of information on Jeffrey Epstein turned out to be more walk of shame than victory lap.

But much more often, these newer outlets were bringing questions to the fore that the legacy media tend to ignore — not through negligence, but because they aren’t niche outlets.