The Washington Post is rolling out its second political web show today with "In Play," a half-hour program hosted by Chris Cillizza and Jackie Kucinich.
I recently spoke with Cillizza and Kucinich about their plans for the daily afternoon show, which is expected to air sometime after 3 p.m. Some of Kucinich and Cillizza's thoughts appeared in Monday's piece on the expansion of PostTV, but here's a bit more from the interview:
Kucinich on plans for "In Play":
"We try to balance what the top news story of the day is versus what we're talking about -- what we're talking about could happen later in the news cycle. We want you to learn something and also incorporate the deeper knowledge that the Washington Post does in their reporting, as well as, stuff that we just know politically speaking. I guess, the way we always talk about it is, politics through the prism of politics. Because it is. When you look at policy through politics, everything has that political prism that we're looking through."
And Cillizza:
Where can we add value to the news? I think you don't want it to be...a zag for the sake of zagging. I think you want to think smartly about the news and where there's opportunity in it. I approach it a lot of the time the way I approach the Fix in terms of coverage. We definitely want to be in the news, but we want to be smartly in the news and kind of have consumable takes on things and good reporting and things that differentiate themselves.
Cillizza on building audience beyond political junkies:
I think there is also a much bigger pool of people who, if you present it to them and say, 'Look, we're going to make what looks really complex and that the bar of entry is super high... You're more interested in it than you might think and here's why.' I think that's a common stream. Obviously, we're doing some more, but different things. I think that's kind of the common stream here.
The world of people who are interested in politics and policy, and what going on in this town, is huge. That's one thing that I've learned in my own experiences with the blog. It's big. And you just have to figure out ways for people to feel like, 'OK, I'm an insider. I can get this. I don't have to like go to every party. I don't have to be on Mike Allen's personal email distribution list for Playbook to kind of understand how this world works.'
Cillizza asked if others in the room, like senior video editor Andrew Pergam and senior politics editor Steven Ginsberg, agreed with that assessment.
"It's helping people feel like an insider, so you don't actually have to be," Pergam responded
"Without having to get all dirty," Ginsberg added quickly, to laughs around the table.