INSIDE
THE CULT
by the 2016 election as a paid service with a free website, rather
than the other way around.
Contracts will be up post-election for several top political reporters, including Glenn Thrush,
Maggie Haberman and Carrie Budoff Brown, along with national
politics editor Charlie Mahtesian.
With such stars in play, Politico’s
cultish, screw-loose culture has
come into even starker relief.
Politico has long had trouble
retaining talent in its newsroom,
where staffers either thrive or
barely survive in a male-dominated, hard-driving environment
defined by frantic 5 a.m. emails
from editors and weekend assignments. There have been so many
departures lately that Politico
editors have done away with the
traditional going-away cake in
the newsroom, which staffers
jokingly call the “awkward cake”
given what they describe as Harris’ sometimes clumsy send-offs.
While some staff have been told
that VandeHei, Harris and Allen
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
“If we’re complacent,
conventional, we’re dead.”
—Jim VandeHei
on what animates Politico’s thinking
all recently signed contracts that
will likely keep each of them at
Politico for the next several years,
people close to VandeHei and
Harris say that the entrepreneurial pair may grow restless before
2016 or depart if Politico Pro –
and a more trade-oriented news
approach — come to dominate
and define the enterprise.
In recent years, Politico has
become more aggressive than
any print or online publication
in locking up in-house and outside talent, including influential
Capitol Hill reporters like Jake
Sherman, Manu Raju and John
Bresnahan and chief investigative
reporter Kenneth Vogel. These
contracts are notoriously hard to
break, and yet star reporter Ben
Smith, who was under contract