Politico.com is the ultimate insider's website - beltway politics for obsessive followers of the American form.
In a fascinating Vanity Fair profile (yes, I know, it's been around for a while) Michael Wolff said of the website's founders:
Their radical idea was not to flatten or break open this most insular of towns but in effect to make it more parochial and self-obsessed.
More interesting is what followed. Stellar success during the 2008 presidential campaign, when monthly uniques hit 11 million, has been followed by sustained digital success and the subsequent launch of a print version.
And guess what? Print has been a vital ingredient in helping Politico become a going concern:
Internet cachet, in other words, has enabled a tabloid-size print version of Politico (also called Politico) to thrive and more than double the company’s revenues—which, just about evenly split between Internet and newspaper, will, it appears, be more than $15 million in 2009—meaning, according to C.E.O. Fred Ryan, that Politico, paying its staffers at nearly the level that The Washington Post pays (starting salaries for reporters at the Postare about $45,000 per year), has hit breakeven.
Further proof that the dead tree narrative is just too simplistic.
Jon Bernstein is the deputy editor of the New Statesman - and an occasional contributor to The Media Blog.
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