John Harris, co-founder of The Politico, just sent a response to my post this morning. I'll paste it here, and attach my comments below the fold:
Ezra,I saw your post just now commenting on the piece that Gabe Sherman wrote for The New Republic on Politico.You argue that Politico is edited with the belief that, “The news has to be entertaining…It's public affairs news boiled down to its most popular component: The drama and sport and, occasionally, substance of politics.”Ezra, the biggest Washington story over the past several months has been the fate of the assorted financial bailout and stimulus measures sent to Congress. Politico has covered these extraordinarily consequential proposals on almost an hourly basis with a team of more than a half-dozen reporters. The team has been led by David Rogers, who has spent the past thirty years covering spending and policy debates on Capitol Hill, most of that time for the Wall Street Journal.In other words: Politico has assigned the most important political and policy story in the country to the reporter who is the most experienced journalist in the country on these subjects. I think that's damn substantive.Yes, we do cover—and enjoy—the gaudy spectacle of politics. It was Jeanne Cummings who broke the story about Sarah Palin's lavish wardrobe expenditures. But Jeanne writes day in, day out on many of the most complicated stories about the intersection of policy and special-interest lobbying. Eamon Javers joined us from Business Week to cover economics. Most recently, David Cloud, a New York Times veteran who spent the past year writing a book about the Iraq war, joined our staff to cover diplomacy and national security.It is true that as a young publication, with a very disciplined focus on Washington, we do not have domestic or foreign bureaus. But if you look at the daily Arena feature—it is moderated by Fred Barbash, who joined us after more than three decades at the Washington Post—you will see that we are often tackling the kind of far-reaching domestic and foreign policy questions you mention in your post. Every single day the Arena sponsors a discussion and debate with contributions from a wide array of political leaders, writers, and think tank experts….It is both substantive and entertaining—no tension between the two—and these people a valuable platform for their ideas.Gabe Sherman's piece was primarily about Politico's business model. The important point here is we profit not so much by high traffic—though we do work hard to promote stories and reach a wide readership—as by the quality of our core audience. Because we are read by members of Congress, White House staff and policymakers across the government, advertisers want to be adjacent to our content.These readers want coverage of everything that makes Washington tick. That includes palace intrigue and substance. So that's what we give them.Finally, your suggestion that policy stories do not drive traffic is not borne out in my experience. The other day the most-read story on our site was a Rogers' exclusive about the Obama administration's plans for a multi-billion-dollar investment in high-speed rail.Thanks for hearing me out on all this and, if you like, sharing it with your readers.John Harris
