Politico Versus New York Times: John Harris Hits Back At Bill Keller
In an unusually acerbic exchange between top editors at major mainstream news orgs about the future of news, Politico’s John Harris is firing back at New York Times executive editor Bill Keller over his surprisingly sharp criticism of Politico yesterday.
Harris, in a statement to me, bluntly said that Keller had taken “shots” at Politico because he and Keller have “placed starkly different bets about the future of the news media.”
Keller’s comments about the Politico came to light in a much-discussed New Republic piece about the Web-based publication. Keller faulted it for its reliance on frivolous scoops and asserted that it plays too much to an insider audience to be financially viable:
The Times’ Bill Keller dismisses Politico’s scooplets as an insubstantial foundation on which to build a sustainable news organization. “If you hadn’t reminded me, I couldn’t have told you who broke the seven houses and the six-figure wardrobe budget. … Politico has focused on an inside game. I’m not sure if it translates to an outside game. I’m not sure how they get scale, and, if they don’t, I’m not sure what the business model is.”
That’s some tough criticism of both Politico’s journalism and its business practices, so I checked in with Politico’s Harris, who emailed over a lengthy and pointed reply.
“I greatly admire Bill Keller and the New York Times, but I was not really surprised by the shots he took at Politico,” Harris wrote. “The truth is we have placed starkly different bets about the future of the news media and what type of journalistic and business models will prosper in the years ahead.”
In his statement, Harris argued that Keller seemed to be suggesting that “only mass audience, general interest news sites” can survive, adding that the travails of papers across the country suggest the “perils of this approach.”
Harris defended Politico against the “inside game” charge by saying that his pub isn’t general interest but is obsessively focused on politics. “Advertisers like this model because they want to be next to content that is being read by this audience — lawmakers, executive branch policymakers, political junkies of all stripes,” he said, adding Politico was “on track for profitability in 2009″ with “a staff of nearly 100.”
In perhaps his sharpest jab, Harris concluded: “As for our journalism, the fact that Politico stories have been cited by the Times, in its paper version, on more than 100 occasions suggests we may be doing something right.”
Just to add my own take, I think that there are actually two Politicos. There’s the good Politico, which offers big-picture, reported pieces that genuinely change the conversation, and boasts bloggers who regularly offer useful info and valuable insights. The good Politico is doing a better job of using Web-based journalistic techniques in a “non-ideological” setting than the Times.
The other Politico does, in fact, play the “inside game” in unsightly ways. It fetishizes Drudge and consciously strives to break the kind of catty gossip that will reverberate inside the cable bubble. It’s worth distinguishing between gossipy pieces that get talked about and pieces that drive the cable conversation because they’re genuinely saying something new. What Drudge links and whatever gossip cable chatters are obsessed with are both highly overstated as markers of journalistic influence in the new media world.
The second Politico may be seen by the pub’s editors as an integral part of the pub’s business model, but it’s hard to see how it doesn’t detract from the site’s better half. That said, Keller’s case strikes me as simplistic and overstated and too dismissive of Politico’s genuine achievements.
Harris’ full statement is here.
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Thank you Greg for pointing out a tremendous flaw with Politico, mainly the Drudge/Gossip aspect of it. I like to call it the “TMZ” of politics. It trivializes the real issues that we face as a nation. Process over policy.
thx dj. drives me crazy
Greg
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I agree with your assesment of Politico totally. Josh referred to them as GOPolitico the other day and many of their stories deserve that moniker. Its hard to take them seriously when a lot of their “scoops” turn out to be a bunch of bullsh*t. Check out Joe Klein acknowledging he was duped into linking to a Politico piece about Pres Obama holding back on sending more troops to Afghanistan only to have it blow up in his face yesterday as ….wait for it……Pres Obama sent more troops to Afghanistan
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http://swampland.blogs.time.com/2009/02/18/troops-before-policy/
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I just don’t know how they survive if they keep killing their own credibility in an effort to get linked by drudge
At every media publication I’ve worked at, where there’s a traditional (print, TV, radio) journo side and a DotCom, the DotCom is treated like a red-headed stepchild. But when these dinosaurs hurry to catch up to the lithe reporting of the blogosphere they have no problem cribbing generously from the new media they’re so quick to dismiss in snobby articles. Keller’s pretension can stem only from fear — that he was late to the game and that he’s just never going to catch up — his attitude is comparable to refusing a helping hand because it isn’t gloved.
Instead he (and the rest of the dinosaurs) should use their reputations to build bridges with the new media folk. Who among us (cough cough, greg, cough, cough) doesn’t have a soft spot for the history, prestige and legacy of the Times or Post?
Josh nailed it when he called it GOPolitico, but he still links to them with some frequency. I have been frustrated and amazed at how many journalists and bloggers take the publication seriously. In fact I am finding more and more that online news outlets and bloggers are becoming very self-referential, which undermines the breadth and quality of online sources.
one other problem is that lots of sites are increasingly just talking just about each other, a smaller and smaller circle…
That’s what I was trying to say with *self-referential* although I realized after I posted it meant something different. I don’t visit conservative blogs very often,but liberal and even more moderate blogs are certainly guilty as charged.
Politico has both good and bad things like any news agency. The NY Times is not immune from such-recall that Drudge often got leaked scoops from the Times during the campaign.
Politico’s main problem imo is that they don’t have anyone of color working there or on their editorial board and they seem quite content with it that way.
Oooooo – cat fight. I loves it.
They both have their problems and their strong points and to me it makes the NYT look desperate to go after a web site. The intertubes must be scarier than I thought.
Johnathan Martin of Politico is a complete partisan hack. He reminds me of the big fat guy in class that moans and groans and his face gets more and more red because everyone decides to just ignore his tantrums.
I’m surprised that piece of work still has a job. Talk about a wasted opportunity. This guy gets press credentials to the WH and decides to try and turn things into a circus.
Too bad everyone is onto his antics.
Good points AmiBlue. Using the schema that Greg sketched out, I would add:
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Politico #1 = Ben Smith, Jeanne Cummings*
Politico #2 = JMart, Mike Allen, VandeHarris, Alex Burns
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Both reporters from #1 though, are equally guilty of falling into the gossipy, catty, snarky #2 camp.
Leaving aside the question of TMZ, Drudge, and snarky gossip, this comment by Keller seems incredibly ill-informed:
“Politico has focused on an inside game. I’m not sure if it translates to an outside game. I’m not sure how they get scale, and, if they don’t, I’m not sure what the business model is.”
This seems to be a deep misreading of online economics, and this should be obvious to Bill Keller (whose own “mass-based” news operations are bleeding money.)
This is not a comment about the normative value of playing the “inside game,” but the fact is, DC-based newsletters are making money hand over fist, while mass circulation dailies are panhandling for government handouts.
And anyway– and this *is* a normative comment– its typical NYTimes arrogance to claim that they themselves play an “outside game,” when in reality, their readership is simply a “larger” inside: an upper and upper-middle class, socially liberal Manhattan demographic primarily concerned with middlebrow politics. The only real difference is that the New York Times, unlike Politico, mistakes this demographic for “the public.”
How amusing folks assume the NYTimes is the “liberal” publication here, when the Times is the outfit that ran Judith Miller’s screed on Chalabi’s assessment of Iraq–Chalabi, who wanted the U.S. to install him as the new leader (for life?) of Iraq. Some credibilty. Some journalistic “judgement.” And Keller’s job title at the time was…what?
Great post, GS. I, too, found the Keller quote a bit extreme. I guess you gotta give him credit for candor, but if ever there’s a position in which you can afford to take the high road every time, it’s the top editor at the New York Times.
Real reporting is a money-loser, so every news business has to have something else that generates traffic. For Politico, it’s an endless stream of fluff and gossip filtered through beltway hacks. For HuffPo, it’s a reams of unpaid content submitted by famous people.
Newspapers used the sports pages and the lifestyle section to bolster their circulation and indirectly subsidize the real news.
Bill Keller is a windbag.
All these stories about the “success” of Politico are laughable.
If your idea of success is a streaker screaming “Look at me! Look at me!” before he gets tackled by security on the 50 yard line at halftime during a college football game then they are doing everything right.
By any real world (and not media love-in) standard this thing is a flop – a gigantic sucking money pit. It is hemorrhaging money. Huge gobs of it. Millions of dollars. All that money Albritton got for selling Riggs to PNC.
Harris saying Politico is “on track for profitability in 2009″ is an obtuse way of saying that they’ve been losing money hand over fist for the last 3 years. And ‘08 was the best shot they ever had at making a buck because of an exciting and endless presidential campaign. They couldn’t do it. Even when the Obama campaign became one of their biggest ad buyers. Say what you want about the other Capitol Hill pubs – CQ, Roll Call and The Hill – they MAKE money. Politico can’t hack it. The only question is: how much of Dad’s moola does Albritton want to see go down the drain before he pulls the plug?