Politico - Ownership, Distribution and Content

Ownership, Distribution and Content

Politico is owned by Allbritton Communications, which owns television stations in Washington, D.C., and elsewhere, all affiliated with the Disney-owned ABC network.

The newspaper has a circulation of approximately 40,000, distributed for free on Capitol Hill, Washington, D.C. and Manhattan. The newspaper prints up to five issues a week while Congress is in session and sometimes publishes one issue a week when Congress is in recess. It carries advertising, including full-page ads from trade associations and a large help-wanted section listing Washington political jobs.

Politico is a partner with several news outlets that co-report and distribute its video, print, and audio content. Partners include CBS News, Allbritton Communications's ABC station WJLA and cable channel NewsChannel 8, radio station WTOP-FM, and Yahoo! News election coverage.

Journalists covering political campaigns for Politico carry a video camera to each assignment, and journalists are encouraged to promote their work elsewhere. Though Politico seeks to break the traditional journalism mold, it expects to make much of its money initially from Washington, D.C.–focused newspaper advertising. Among the reporters who work for Politico are Mike Allen, Jonathan Martin, Josh Gerstein, Glenn Thrush, John Bresnahan, Darren Goode, Carrie Budoff Brown, Manu Raju, Maggie Haberman, Dylan Byers, Kenneth P. Vogel, Anna Palmer, Jonathan Allen, Scott Wong, Reid Epstein, Alex Burns, Darren Samuelsohn, Ben White, and James Hohmann. In 2010, Politico added its first two opinion columnists, Michael Kinsley and Joe Scarborough.

In a 2007 opinion piece, progressive watchdog group Media Matters for America accused Politico of having a "Republican tilt". In a letter to Executive Editor Jim VandeHei, Senior Political Writer Ben Smith and Chief Political Correspondent Mike Allen, Editor in Chief John F. Harris reminded his colleagues that they had left the more "traditional news organizations" where they had worked previously, starting Politico with the intent to be more transparent. To that end, he asked his colleagues for an honest assessment of the the claims set forth in the letter from Media Matters. Ben Smith answered: "Media Matters has a point: ...that Bush's public endorsement made us seem too close to the White House. That was clearly a favor from the president to us (albeit a small one), and felt to me like one of those clubby Beltway moments that make the insiders feel important and the outsiders feel (accurately) like outsiders." The other primary editors disagreed with the general accusation for a variety of reasons, and some pointed to accusations of a liberal bias from the other side of the political spectrum.

In September 2008, The New York Times reported that Politico would expand its operations following the 2008 presidential election: "fter Election Day, will add reporters, editors, Web engineers and other employees; expand circulation of its newspaper edition in Washington; and print more often."

A 2009 profile of the organization in Vanity Fair said Politico had an editorial staff of 75 and a total staff of 100. Its newspaper circulation is around 32,000, and as of summer 2009 its web traffic was around 6.7 million unique visitors per month. This is fewer than the 11 million it had during the high point of the campaign, but most political news outlets have lower traffic outside election years. As of July 2009, it was expected to have annual revenue of around $15 million, primarily from the printed product, enough for the publication to remain financially solvent.

In October 2012, Politico hired Washington bureau chief David Chalian, previously let go from Yahoo! News for saying GOP 'Happy to have a party with black people drowning' at the 2012 RNC convention in Tampa, Florida. In the last days of the United States elections, 2012, writer Donovan Slack reported that in nine of the 50 states, European electoral observer activities were blocked from polls, and that observers had to take precautions in the face of security threats.