Politico To Launch New Attention-Grabbing Newsish Thing
Politico—it is a tiny niche newspaper in DC with a money-losing website—is expanding! They are going to do a "local news" thing out there in Washington, where "local news" means "The Redskins."
Well, that will probably be their interpretation of local news. Because all the rest of it is poverty, development, crime, gentrification, and other stuff involving the poors and Black People and none of that shit Wins The Afternoon.
Anyway. Everyone is totally excited about this "hyperlocal" new Politico news thing. They hired Jim Brady, who used to run washingtonpost.com. He is a good hire. Jack Shafer thinks it will be a very good website that Politico invents, about the Redskins.
But only the local alt-weekly, the City Paper, notes that it will almost certainly lose a lot of money, like Politico does.
Because, come on, a staff of 50 people writing local news? For the internet? The people who read Politico do not care about local news. Maybe they care about some new fancy beer bar in Logan Circle, or something. But a website with a paid staff of three or four could pretty much take care of that.
Once this stupid thing launches and everyone talks about how it is a new and exciting model for local news or something, just remember that it will not be making any money, because Politico is a rich person's vanity project.