Category Archives: politico

Observer: Politico isn’t a newspaper. But it might be the future of print

Posted on by
Reply
Peter Preston: "[Politico] is "niche journalism". It employs around 175 people now. It is in profit already. More than that, it seems on the point of launching specialist areas of coverage – niches within the niche – and stowing them away behind a paywall. ... Find the right niche – say one that everyone who makes a living out of US government has to be aware of – and you have an audience worth chasing. Most of Politico's cash comes from the Capitol Hill paper it puts out one to five times a week. Print ads have a value the web can't reach yet. But the operation – a brand-new source of multimedia journalism, not a conventional newspaper – has few of print's hang-ups."

New York Times: Politico’s Creators Plan Local News Web Site for Washington

Posted on by
Reply
"Allbritton Communications said its new operation would start with a newsroom of about 50 people — far larger than those of other local news start-ups around the country, though still smaller than the local news staffs of major metropolitan newspapers. ... Robert L. Allbritton, who heads the family-owned company, and [Jim] Brady said they had concluded that the venture had to be done on a large scale or not done at all — essentially the same premise that accompanied the founding of Politico."

Media Money: The lessons of Politico: Someone needs to bankroll the losses of content start-ups

Posted on by
Reply
Peter Kirwan reads Michael Wolff writing about Politico in Vanity Fair: "The means of production of distribution might be free or freely available. But lots of content-based start-ups die because they don’t possess sufficient capital to get through years 1-3. Talent counts for a lot, but it’s not quite everything."

CJR: Politico Junkies

Posted on by
Reply
"The life cycle of a story is no longer the simple reporting-writing-editing-publication; it’s now reporting-writing-editing-publication-syndication-conversation. Which is nothing new, generally speaking—pickup has always been, to some extent, a goal of journalism—but as the Web flattens the relationship between discrete publications, and as the link economy grows, publicity dominates a broader portion of a story’s lifespan. And it becomes an increasingly integral component of news organizations’ business strategies."