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President Obama resumed his role as media critic last night, inspired by a questioner who asked what's surprised him since he took office.

The answer: The 24/7 media.

"I've been surprised by how the news cycle here in Washington is focused on what happens this minute, as opposed to what needs to happen over the course of months, years," Obama told the crowd at George Washington University. "The 24-hour news cycle is just so lightning fast and the attention span I think is so short that sometimes it's difficult to keep everybody focused on the long term."

Obama added that "the things that are really going to matter" two decades from now "are not the things that are being talked about on television on any given day, or appear on the Internet on a blog on any given day."

It is somewhat ironic that Obama made these comments at an interactive town hall that included questions on Skype and Twitter.