Politico reports: President Barack Obama has settled on Jay Carney, communications director for Vice President Joe Biden and former Washington bureau chief for TIME magazine, to replace Robert Gibbs as White House press secretary, presidential advisers said.

Carney met with Obama recently for what one colleague called an “audition,” an official said. Colleagues praised Carney’s serious demeanor and command of international issues.

Gibbs has said he plans to leave the White House in mid-February to give paid speeches and serve as a consultant, including to Obama’s reelection campaign.

Carney carries insider credibility as a former TIME Washington bureau chief and White House correspondent, and heartland celebrity from his pundit days, colleagues said.

Carney, a Virginia native, is a 1987 graduate of Yale University, where he received a bachelor’s degree in Russian and Eastern European Studies.

Carney’s bio, when he was announced before the inauguration as Assistant to the Vice President and Director of Communications: “Jay Carney has been the Washington Bureau Chief for TIME Magazine since September 2005 … He was in Havana when Mikhail Gorbachev visited in 1989 and on the first plane of journalists into Panama for the U.S. invasion later the same year. He served as a correspondent in TIME’s Moscow Bureau for three years, from 1990-1993, covering the collapse of the Soviet Union.

“Since joining TIME’s Washington bureau in 1993, Carney has twice served as White House correspondent. On September 11, 2001, he was one of a handful of reporters who were aboard Air Force One with President Bush. Prior to joining TIME, he was a reporter for The Miami Herald. … He and his wife, Claire Shipman [of ABC News], live in Washington, D.C., with their son and daughter.”

(Source: Politico)