Reply #22: Bush Friend funds "Politico" New Webzine! More here.......

[KoKo]

The Politico, financed by Allbritton Communications and based here in suburban Washington in a glassy tower that once housed Gannett, has smoothed the transition for print journalists with handsome salaries, though no one is talking exact figures.

Its publisher, Robert L. Allbritton, 37, scion of the banking and media family that once owned the defunct Washington Star, said in an interview that he would finance The Politico for “the foreseeable future” and has committed to paying for expensive campaign travel. He has hired a staff of about 50 people, almost half of them journalists.

“Newspapers have to be all things to all people,” Mr. Allbritton said. “On the Internet, there is no one site that delivers everything. It’s broken down into mini-mini-subdivisions of interests and they attract people who are passionately interested in one subject.”

Mr. Allbritton also said he has no political agenda and is in the business because it could be profitable; if Google or some other entity eventually wanted to buy it, he said, “that would be great,” but that it is not part of his business plan. (He had briefly considered buying The Hill last year, but declined; the asking price was a reported $40 million.)

He is best known for following his father, Joe L. Allbritton, as chief executive of the Riggs Bank, which was sold in 2004 after a Senate investigation found that Gen. Augusto Pinochet, the late Chilean dictator, had kept millions of dollars in secret accounts at Riggs. Robert Allbritton has been chairman and chief executive of Allbritton Communications, which owns television stations in Washington and a half dozen other markets, since 2001.

He predicted that The Politico would start turning a profit in less than five years, from advertising in all of its incarnations — on the Web, with its own television program and in a limited print edition, with 30,000 copies three days a week while Congress is in session and one day a week when Congress is in recess. The Politico will be free for readers, both online and in print.

It is hoping to attract the kind of advertisers that already pay to be in other publications aimed at Washington — chiefly, political advocacy groups that are trying to influence Congress, as well as local businesses.

One of the few models for what The Politico is trying to do might be Inside.com, a media-oriented Web site that tried to branch into print and conferences. It started in 2000 with venture capital backing and it, too, attracted well-known journalists eager for the promise of riches and fame from the Web. Alas, it vanished almost two years later after the dot
For Journalists, Politics Not as Usual


“We were ahead of our time,” said Kurt Andersen, one of the founders of Inside.com and now a contributing editor at New York magazine. He said The Politico had an advantage because “there is now this huge online ad sales culture.”

“But,” he added, “you wonder, with this narrowly defined, very Washington-centric political focus, no matter how great it is, what is the size of that audience? You can be the best, but if it doesn’t have a gigantic audience, advertisers won’t be interested.”

Mr. Harris, 43, who left his job as political editor of The Post to become editor in chief of The Politico, said the site would distinguish itself with lively writing, scoops, video and behind-the-scenes reporting from the campaign trail. The goal, he said, is not to steal audiences from other publications but for The Politico to become part of their routine as they surf the entire multimedia landscape.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/business/media/08washington.html?ex=1185940800&en=4b12f7ca5028d4dc&ei=5070