Politico’s Adventures in Meat-Space
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“We’re mostly a bunch of newspaper hacks,” said Jim VandeHei, the executive editor of the political media entity Politico, which, if you are, statistically speaking, like most Americans, you are more likely to recognize as the somewhat obscure co-sponsor of some of this election season’s televised presidential debates than from its Web site, politico.com, or its printed Beltway cheat sheet, The Politico.
He was talking about himself and his boss, John Harris, whom he followed out of The Washington Post in 2006 to join the nascent Allbritton-owned media property amid some print-industry-rankling hubris.
“I think we’ll show that we’re better than The New York Times or The Washington Post,” he told The Observer at the time. Back then, Politico was conceived as a news-gathering omnivore, recruiting its reporting talent from traditional newspaper, Web and television backgrounds to join the fast pace of the 24-hour, multiplatform news cycle.
When Allbritton Communications, a D.C.-based media company, launched Politico in January 2007, executives described the nascent venture as a politically obsessed news outfit that would operate over multiple platforms, including print, web, and TV. A Politico Web site and newspaper debuted shortly thereafter.
But the TV show dawdled, until now.
In the coming months, the company plans to launch a Sunday morning political television talk show, to be dubbed Politico TV.
“We don’t want it to be a traditional Sunday show,” said Mr. VandeHei. But, “luckily we have a bunch of talented TV people around us.”
In fact, the translation of the print and Web identities of Politico, Mr. VandeHei confessed, will take some time to hammer out.
“We want to create TV that has some of the Politico edge to it,” he said. “That takes a lot of experimentation.”
Recently, that experimentation has been taking place on Capital Sunday, a half-hour political show that broadcasts at 9:30 a.m. on WJLA-7, an ABC affiliate (which, like Politico, is owned by Allbritton).
There, in recent months, anchor Leon Harris has played host to an increasing number of guests culled from the Politico ranks.
On the March 30 telecast, guests included Politico editor in chief John Harris, correspondent Jeanne Cummings, columnist Roger Simon and reporter Carrie Budoff Brown.
“We’re sort of trying out different segments right now,” said Mr. VandeHei. “Once we feel like we have the total package ready, that’s when we would switch it over to Politico TV.”
The Sunday morning D.C. chatfest is not an uncrowded space. Normally, these kinds of shows can gain traction only by landing some decent Beltway “gets” or, very occasionally, by getting insiders and smart people to put such a new spin on the political news of the day that the voice becomes an essential ingredient in the Sunday political punditry corps.
Mr. VandeHei is going to take the latter route.
“Are you going to get the presidential candidates on day one?” said Mr. VandeHei. “No.”
Therefore, no long-form interview format, which depends so completely on landing one or two top guests.
“The question is, can you bring someone who really knows politics and could be part of a fast-paced debate about what’s going on?”
Take Hillary Clinton spokesperson Howard Wolfson.
“He’s a fascinating guy, who understands politics,” said Mr. VandeHei. “Just interviewing him I don’t think would necessarily make for that distinctive of TV. But including him in a conversation, where he’s part of a panel debating what’s happening in the campaign versus being the spokesperson for Hillary Clinton, there’s the potential for taking people inside the process.”
In any case, segments will be short.
So far, the tryouts for recurring features have been less than radical. One innovation, said Mr. VandeHei, was a segment called “Turn the Tables,” in which the guests get to ask questions of the host rather than vice versa.
That’s not to be confused with a recent “Top Tables” bit in which Mr. Harris left the studio and interviewed Politico correspondents over bread sticks—jealous much, Mr. Matthews?—at the Charlie Palmer Steakhouse restaurant.
Innovations that don’t work out will be tossed.
One keeper, according to Mr. VandeHei, will be the cheeky dispatches by Politico video blogger James Kotecki. Recently, for example, Mr. Kotecki filed a report titled “Top Five April Fools for 2008.” (No. 4: John Edwards. “For not endorsing anybody,” explained Mr. Kotecki. “Come on, man, it’s not like you can save up political capital and live off the interest.”)
According to Mr. VandeHei, Politico TV will also capitalize on its freshly minted partnership with Yahoo News. On April 15, Yahoo will relaunch its election page, which will heavily feature Politico campaign coverage. At the same time, Politico TV will likely incorporate segments leaning on the Yahoo “Dashboard,”—an extensive collection of political stats, voting numbers and demographic data.
“When we think of Politico, we’re always talking about, well, it would be nice to build the ESPN of politics,” said Mr. VandeHei. “I think part of that would be treating politics like sports, blending in more stats, dusting down the numbers and getting inside the strategy.”
The bulk of the show’s personnel, he said, are already in place. After the re-branding, Leon Harris, a veteran of CNN, will continue to host the show. Don Ennis, a former NBC News producer, will serve as executive producer.
Politico TV will air on Allbritton’s six other ABC-affiliate stations, which serve some decidedly outside-the-beltway markets, including Birmingham, Ala., Harrisburg, Pa., Little Rock, Ark., Tulsa, Okla., Roanoke, Va. and Charleston, S.C. The show will not immediately be seen in New York, where WABC currently fills the same time slot with local news. In one long-shot scenario Politico TV could someday serve as a syndicated lead-in across the country for This Week with George Stephanopoulos in much the same way that The Chris Matthews Show serves as a half-hour warm-up for Meet the Press.
“Obviously, we would love to syndicate it if the show is successful,” said Mr. VandeHei. “But we need to walk before we can run.”
In addition to its broadcast stations, Allbritton Communications owns News Channel 8, a regional cable channel, serving more than a million households in the Washington region. Mr. VandeHei said that Politico TV will likely also play on Channel 8. Taking further advantage of the cable platform, he said, “is stage three or four of how we can blend the Allbritton properties together.”
In the meantime, Mr. VandeHei said that he is more focused on expanding Politico’s daily Web TV offerings. Currently, Mr. Kotecki hosts a three-minute segment every day, rounding up and riffing off the morning’s news. Mr. VandeHei said there are plans afoot to expand to seven minutes of daily Web TV programming.
Mr. VandeHei said that moving forward, he and his colleagues will rely more on their instincts than on ratings to determine what type of features are working. “If I watch it and I think it’s good, I assume a lot of people will think it’s good,” he said. “If I watch it and I think it’s crap, I assume a lot of people will think it’s crap.”
Copyright © 2008 The New York Observer. All rights reserved.
