On a cold night in early February, Hillary Clinton looked out at the voters CNN had assembled for a town-hall event at the Derry Opera House in Derry, New Hampshire, and told them, “I never thought I would do this.”

Twenty-four years earlier, on another CNN telecast, Candy Crowley delivered this news: “Now Hillary Rodham Clinton is running for president.”

Crowley clarified: “Actually, she’s running for her husband, who’s running for president. But it can be a distinction without much difference.”

Media coverage of her presumptive nomination for president by the Democratic Party has noted its historic significance – she is the first woman to top a major-party ticket – and described how she bounced back from a primary defeat in 2008 to win.

In a literal sense, this is Clinton’s second attempt to win the White House. But a review of press accounts from her early days in the national spotlight makes clear that in the media’s eyes, the hard-charging, Yale-educated lawyer from Park Ridge, Ill., has been running for president since 1992.