Interesting follow up from the weekend on the coming changes at Politico and Bloomberg Politics.
Later this year two of the biggest names behind the website Politico – Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen – will leave, apparently to start a new venture. It seems curious that Politico would allow the two of them to stay on for nine months while they plot the launch of a product that might compete directly with Politico. But that seems to be the “state of play” as Mike Allen might put it.
Meanwhile, it appears Michael Bloomberg has had enough of the kind of political journalism offered by Mark Halperin and John Heilemann and has given word their contracts won’t be renewed after 2016. It’s not personal, just business. Bloomberg believes his company is in the usable data business not the political news candy business.
Does anyone see merger possibilities here?
At the same time, a weekend analysis posted on Gawker suggests there really isn’t a huge market for a new political journalism start-up. The article questions whether there is even enough of a market for the outlets that exist today:
Bloomberg is exiting politics. Chris Hughes is done with The New Republic.Atlantic Media gutted National Journal. Disney killed Grantland—which wasn’t political, but was still Big Name-driven prestige journalism—and divested itself of Fusion. (FiveThirtyEight might find itself in post-election trouble too, though there’s plenty of ways data-driven sports coverage could still be useful to a media organization with a mutually beneficial relationship with scammy daily fantasy sports companies.) About the only people still investing significantly in name-driven politics coverage are Viacom, through some recent MTV hires, and Univision, now the sole owner of Fusion.
But perhaps the next VandeHei-Allen play isn’t a traditional start-up but one built on the sharing of political intelligence through sponsored/pay walled tip-sheets like Allen’s Playbook.
Also from the weekend, a New York Times article on the future of the Daily News. Which is sort a man bites dog configuration.
