Mayor Michael Bloomberg, during a trip to Albany. (photo credit: azi paybarah / observer)

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he is more accessible to reporters than just about anybody in office.

Bloomberg said "in the busy season" he has about "four press conferences a week," plus a weekly hour-long appearance on WOR710 with radio host John Gambling this morning.

"I don't know of any other elected official any place that has that kind of access," said Bloomberg.

"And what we do, typically, at a press conference is you build it around an announcement or an event. The press can first ask questions about that event or that announcement and then we take questions on other subjects. and it's pretty free-wheeling and they can ask anything…for city things, they can ask anything. And they do."

The mayor's description is accurate, and fits with the results of research on the anatomy of a Bloomberg press conference.  Bloomberg is less accessible, however, when it comes  to one-on-one interviews with other, non-broadcast media types. When Bloomberg spoke to a New York Times reporter in October 2010, they noted it was "his first extensive interview with a newspaper in several years." He has not sat with a local newspaper reporter since then.