INSIDE
THE CULT
zation in Washington and Pro’s
expansion has allowed us to do
that,” Harris says. “Much of what
Pro’s doing is aimed at a highly
specialized audience. We want
some of their work to be aimed at
a broader audience of politically
sophisticated and really highly
engaged people, and the way to
do that is through the main site.”
Harris adds that Politico editors “want to make sure it’s one
newsroom and not two distinct
newsrooms.”
As for his future amid Politico’s growth, Harris wrote, “at the
moment, I’m expecting to stay for
as long as I’m welcome.”
AN ESPN OF POLITICS?
In addition to hiring up policy reporters, Politico’s also now looking for an executive producer for
Politico TV.
Politico drew attention this
spring on several primary nights
with its distinctive Politico Live
streaming broadcasts, which include such unique elements as
a “Mikey Cam” that follows the
indefatigable Allen around as
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
he pulls up breaking news on a
BlackBerry. C-SPAN also aired
several of the broadcasts, thus
landing Politico on a national
television network. While Politico’s PR team has proven highly
adept at getting reporters and
editors on air from the start, and
TV regulars like Allen, VandeHei
and Patrick Gavin are found daily
during the “Politico Playbook”
segment of MSNBC’s Morning
Joe, a regular television component hasn’t come together.
Don Ennis, whom Politico
hired in late 2007 as an executive producer to help create TV
content, says his first conversation with VandeHei included
a discussion of becoming the
“ESPN of Politics.” Both editors,
he said, longed to do something
“less traditional” than the usual
punditocracy, but couldn’t pin
down exactly what that would
be. They didn’t want Politico’s
TV brand to be over-produced,
which seemed inconsistent with
emulating ESPN, a network
where shows like SportsCenter are tightly structured to let