Gawker
The New York Times checks in today on The Politico, Allbritton Communications' much-discussed multimedia venture that's set to launch in two weeks. It first made waves in November, when former Washington Post political bigwigs Jim VandeHei and John Harris became prize acquisitions, announcing that they were jumping ship to the online start-up. At the time, reports told of an "impressive" budget allowance to attract yet more high-profile names, and the roster has since added Mike Allen and Roger Simon, lured from Time and Bloomberg News, respectively. The Politico's platform is a virtual smorgasbord of combined media, with The Capitol Leader, a new three-day-a week D.C. paper led by Harris and VandeHei, serving as the center course. Politico reporters will be decidedly seen and heard, with regular appearances on Allbritton's ABC affiliate station and its 24-hour cable news service, not to mention a deal for a daily segment on WTOP, Washington's all-news radio station, and national exposure on CBS News.
Since the news broke of Harris and VandeHei's defection, the discussion surrounding the new venture and its star headliners (both of whom are over 35) emerged as a generational debate about the viability of print in a web-heavy era. The press release set the tone by throwing a dig at its print competitors, stating, "While other traditional news organizations are cutting back on resources and their commitment to political journalism, Allbritton is planning to invest heavily in the next generation of journalism," while Allbritton chairman Robert Allbritton, who has agreed to finance the project "for the forseeable future," according to the Times, now predicts that it will begin to turn a profit in under five years, and has increased his staff to 50, nearly half of them reporters. Meanwhile, the so-called "VandeHarris" defection and the project itself have drawn plenty of ire from naysayers of all ages. As Jack Shafer questioned the journalists' ability to continue their star-quality reporting without their association with the Post, media bloggers like Elaine Meyer and Huffpo's Jay Rosen took umbrage with the publication's promise of "pulling back the curtain" on the insider politics of Washington reporting.
Despite the controversy, the venture, with its landmark move from old-school print to online media, has sparked plenty of valuable discussion about the future of both. Thirty-year-old Ben Smith, a New York Daily News and New York Observer alum who will blog about the 2008 presidential campaign for The Politico, observed to the Times that, in the era of changing media, "[i]t seems riskier to stay in print than to go to something new," while Slate founding editor Michael Kinsley commented that The Politico's ability to attract mainstram journalists represents quite a change from Slate's founding year in 1996, when, as he told the Times, "you couldn't get anyone from the establishment." Meanwhile, VandeHei dismissed questions of whether plum sources from the Post and other high-profile papers would still be willing to talk to an online journalist, saying, "Reporters here will transcend the organization."
That statement may be truer than he realizes; as Times reporter Katharine Q. Seelye noted, The Politico will encourage its already highly-visible reporters to further self-promote by continuing to publish elsewhere. This move, combined with the already-packed roster of PR opportunities and public appearances for staff, indicates that the "next generation of political journalism" also includes a level of unabashed self-promotion that, as Harris told the Times, would likely be "uncomfortable for a traditional journalist." Or anyone who just wants to report the news and not worry about doing non-stop TV and radio in the process.
