To POLITICO We Go

Our last site visit was a great success from beginning to end, starting with acquiring a copy of POLITICO, which we have not been able to obtain because it is so popular, upon our arrival at its headquarters. We began with a lunch conversation with Steve Buttry, director of community engagement and a TCU alumnus, about TBD, a local area news network in Washington, D.C. that launched Aug. 9, 2010.

Even though TBD is extremely new and only a few weeks old, a strong emphasis on social media, with more than 3,500 followers already on Twitter and an in-depth iPhone app, and help from reporters from family news source POLITICO, it is growing and growing. The focus of TBD is local news that is relevant to readers and producing and providing stories, via partnerships and links to others news organizations that readers want to read and learn more about.

Later in the day we met with Jim VandeHei, executive editor and co-founder of POLITICO, and learned that since its creation in 2003, POLITICO has a circulation of 32,000 and 150 employees with more than half being reporters with ambitions to expand to 200 employees by the end of next year. POLITICO is an up-and-coming leader in political news and has been mentioned by every news organization we have visited as something they check every morning. This may be surprising, but it’s not when you hear the business model: hire the best journalists. Basically, that’s it because the ideology behind this is that the top reporters will find the news, have the sources to report it well and hopefully better than the competition and the news and quality of that will news set the reputation for the company.

Clearly this method of business success is working for POLITICO as they mentioned a competing publication has expressed a desire and intention to attempt to seduce some of POLITICO’s writers over to their publication. POLITICO’s response is essentially for them to bring it on because they want to keep their journalists happy. However, one of the questions I wanted to ask was about the high number of people that work at POLITICO who came from The Washington Post. Many people, including Jim who spoke with us, have experience working at the Post, and I wondered how they thought they could compete against an organization who so many of them have worked for, if other aspects of their business model differed and basically how they planned and are staying different from the Post and what they produce.

One of the things I appreciated about the POLITICO visit was the forwardness in thinking and explanation. The fact that they are more aggressive now than when they started, are actively engaging in social media and all the facets that entails and understand the priceless value of journalists is astounding and certainly some of the reasons they are such a success.