I love Mike Allen's Playbook. Unabashedly. I wouldn't even deny that it's "the 4chan of political reporting." But it's the best guide to the morning news, and Allen mixes "drive the day" trivia -- and there is a lot of that -- with a good eye for the substance in stories. But even as an admirer, and consumer, of much of the Politico's product, I think Gabe Sherman's take on the outlet sidesteps some fairly unsettling conversations.As far as I can tell, The Politico is trying to do something fairly radical: Sustain a news-gathering organization off of, well, news. They don't have a local monopoly and there are no real estate ads. Foreign reportage isn't subsidized by home buyers and the investigative team doesn't rely on the Macy's Holiday Sale for support. But in order to do that, they've had to create a leaner machine. They need to maximize the views each story gets and minimize the stories that don't get views. The news has to be entertaining. It has to be dramatic. There have to be winners and losers and scandals and mistakes and new narratives clashing with old decisions that mix with secret revelations to create breaking scoops AND MUCH OF IT HAS TO BE IN CAPS. There's nothing wrong with that. Well, there's a little bit wrong with that. But overall, the Politico does a fine job at what it's doing. The problem is The Politico is a model with no room for stories on climate change and welfare mothers and daily life in Baghdad. It's public affairs news boiled down to its most popular component: The drama and sport and, occasionally substance, of politics.And the model makes sense. No one likes stories on climate change and welfare mothers and daily life in Baghdad. They're low performing. They clutter the page. Indeed, a page with too many of them will lose readers to, well, Politico. In a healthy media environment, that's fine. There's no reason that some news can't double as entertainment. There's no reason that some outlets can't cater to horserace junkies. The Politico, in that world, is a positive development: More news! This is not a healthy media environment. And the game is, to some degree, zero sum. If the newspapers lose readers to the Politico's more concentrated shot of political adrenaline, they'll fold or follow. But the fault doesn't lie with the Politico. The Politico isn't a revolution in news. It's an evolution. It's the direction everything has been going in for a long time. We can all predict it. But no one quite knows how to stop it, or what to do once we get there. Because even the 4chan of political reporting would agree that a world of all Politicos is a world with lots of politics but fairly little news. They'd be able to drive the day, but without the sort of reporting that puts housing on the agenda or climate change before Congress, they wouldn't be going anywhere. Politico's model makes sense -- Mike Allen brags, correctly, that it "is one of a tiny handful of news organizations in the WORLD that is actually GROWING." -- but it's a post-news model. And the fact that it's one of the only new models working only further emphasizes how far we are from solving the news media's problems. THE PROBLEM OF THE POLITICO.
I love Mike Allen's Playbook. Unabashedly. I wouldn't even deny that it's "the 4chan of political reporting." But it's the best guide to the morning news, and Allen mixes "drive the day" trivia -- and there is a lot of that -- with a good eye for the substance in stories. But even as an admirer, and consumer, of much of the Politico's product, I think Gabe Sherman's take on the outlet sidesteps some fairly unsettling conversations.As far as I can tell, The Politico is trying to do something fairly radical: Sustain a news-gathering organization off of, well, news. They don't have a local monopoly and there are no real estate ads. Foreign reportage isn't subsidized by home buyers and the investigative team doesn't rely on the Macy's Holiday Sale for support. But in order to do that, they've had to create a leaner machine. They need to maximize the views each story gets and minimize the stories that don't get views. The news has to be entertaining. It has to be dramatic. There have to be winners and losers and scandals and mistakes and new narratives clashing with old decisions that mix with secret revelations to create breaking scoops AND MUCH OF IT HAS TO BE IN CAPS. There's nothing wrong with that. Well, there's a little bit wrong with that. But overall, the Politico does a fine job at what it's doing. The problem is The Politico is a model with no room for stories on climate change and welfare mothers and daily life in Baghdad. It's public affairs news boiled down to its most popular component: The drama and sport and, occasionally substance, of politics.And the model makes sense. No one likes stories on climate change and welfare mothers and daily life in Baghdad. They're low performing. They clutter the page. Indeed, a page with too many of them will lose readers to, well, Politico. In a healthy media environment, that's fine. There's no reason that some news can't double as entertainment. There's no reason that some outlets can't cater to horserace junkies. The Politico, in that world, is a positive development: More news! This is not a healthy media environment. And the game is, to some degree, zero sum. If the newspapers lose readers to the Politico's more concentrated shot of political adrenaline, they'll fold or follow. But the fault doesn't lie with the Politico. The Politico isn't a revolution in news. It's an evolution. It's the direction everything has been going in for a long time. We can all predict it. But no one quite knows how to stop it, or what to do once we get there. Because even the 4chan of political reporting would agree that a world of all Politicos is a world with lots of politics but fairly little news. They'd be able to drive the day, but without the sort of reporting that puts housing on the agenda or climate change before Congress, they wouldn't be going anywhere. Politico's model makes sense -- Mike Allen brags, correctly, that it "is one of a tiny handful of news organizations in the WORLD that is actually GROWING." -- but it's a post-news model. And the fact that it's one of the only new models working only further emphasizes how far we are from solving the news media's problems. 
