For POLITICO reporters, it was disorienting and exhausting. But it marked a more fundamental adjustment for the hundreds of lawmakers and staffers who populate Washington, suddenly confronting a new set of rules about what gets covered and when. This is a brief history of the chaotic early days of the newsroom as seen from Capitol Hill, based on interviews with more than 20 “major players,” to borrow early POLITICO parlance, including the House and Senate staffers and the reporters who covered them. News was getting faster. Political coverage was starting to democratize the workings of the Beltway. And legacy newspapers across the country were facing existential cuts. On Capitol Hill, the ground was shifting underfoot, for better or worse, faster than anyone could see.
All titles refer to the jobs people held at the time in 2007; this transcript has been edited lightly for length and clarity.
I. “WHAT’S ‘THE POLITICO’?”
An internal POLITICO memo dated Jan. 2, 2007, three weeks before the publication’s launch, laid out 10 points for what a story should be. “Does this story explode a myth or reveal a new truth?” one read. “Would a congressional aide email this story to a friend?” asked another. The guidelines weren’t about specific reporting targets. They asked how to “get SOMEONE’S juices going.” On Capitol Hill, some staffers and lawmakers were wary. Others got it right away. “I worked for Chuck Schumer and you never had to explain anything about the media to him,” said Matthew Miller, communications director at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee. Nancy Pelosi, the newly empowered House speaker following Democratic gains during the 2006 midterm elections, agreed to an early interview with POLITICO. “Worst case scenario: ‘Oh well, it doesn’t last — at least we only did one interview,’” said Brendan Daly, her communications director. “We’ll move on from there.”
BRIAN WALSH, communications director for Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas): People were naturally skeptical given how ingrained Roll Call and The Hill were among the Capitol Hill community at that time. People were still wrestling with the print versus digital mindset.
TONY FRATTO, deputy press secretary for President George W. Bush: After we got our asses kicked in the midterms, we were talking a lot about a different Washington. We were already in a period of evolution in media. There were lots of quaint conversations going on like: What do you do with bloggers? Do you have bloggers come in the press room? What do you do with digital reporting? We were right on the cusp of trying to figure out social media. Same thing with blogs.
KRISTEN HAWN, communications director for the House Democrats’ Blue Dog coalition: For so long, everybody would go to their desk, and the staff assistant would have put all the papers — like, physical copies of papers — in your chair. And that’s where you get your news for the day. I tell some of my younger staffers sometimes, ‘They’re called clips because we actually had to clip them out of the newspaper, tape them together, and fax them to our bosses.’ It’s so ancient.
BRAD DAYSPRING, communications director for the Republican Study Committee: At that point in time, if you’re looking at other news outlets, the websites didn’t update in seconds. The same stories would stay on the website all day. The website would just be like a copy of the paper. (Disclosure: Brad Dayspring now works for POLITICO.)
TONY FRATTO: I was rooting for them. But I wouldn’t have bet money on them.
BRAD DAYSPRING: In people’s minds, “different” may have been a more edgy Hill or Roll Call. When it launched, it was far more disruptive than anyone imagined.
BRIAN WALSH: Roll Call came out twice a week. The Hill came out once a week. They hit the desk of every Hill staffer. People devoured them. People didn’t know how that would translate digitally.
BRAD DAYSPRING: It was the equivalent of going from a horse and buggy to a combustion engine, in terms of just speed and regular cadence throughout the day. The only real equivalent were bloggers who updated regularly, and they just were considered, at that time, second-class citizens in the journalistic realm.
DON STEWART, communications director for Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.): As soon as it came out, it was clear: It wasn’t just a third newspaper. The Crypt blog and all that. They were breaking news like crazy.
KEN VOGEL, POLITICO staff writer: At first, the skeptical coverage was that we didn’t need another The Hill or Roll Call. Then it was, “This is for people like Rahm Emanuel and people who want to be like Rahm Emanuel. Insiders and wannabe insiders.”
ALEX CONANT, spokesperson for the Bush White House: I understood it to be they’re gonna cover politics the way ESPN covers sports — Just 24/7, no news is too small to share. As a political junkie myself, that made a lot of sense to me. I just straight-up loved it.
KEN VOGEL: The idea of covering politics as sport — the ESPN of politics — that was meant as a pejorative. But POLITICO just embraced it. Like, “Yeah, that’s it. ESPN is a huge brand. Why would we shy away from being compared to it?” And there were sources who would deal with us because of that: “Oh look, I’m being treated like a player on the Yankees.”
RYAN GRIM, POLITICO staff writer: For our first big scoop, I think the source was Allbritton. He was on a yacht in the Caribbean and spotted Hillary Clinton on another yacht, with some donor, and that was our first scoop.
ROBERT ALLBRITTON, founder and publisher of POLITICO: My mother-in-law had a house on Anguilla, so my wife Elena and I were there for a long weekend. The Clintons were also on the island. I was responsible for one of the first “spotted” as Bill and Hillary had dinner at a beachside restaurant called Mangos with Bob Johnson, former CEO of BET TV. Bill, never out of character, worked every table in the restaurant. I conveniently used the restroom when he got close to make sure there wasn’t a reverse “spotted.” Bill and Elena had a nice little chat. I gave the whole thing to Ben Smith.
RODELL MOLLINEAU, staff director, Senate Democratic Caucus, Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.): I think some of the skepticism happened as a result of the hype coming from POLITICO — that this was going to be a game-changer. This was not a low-key rollout.
DANIEL REILLY, POLITICO staff writer: On Capitol Hill, you’re simultaneously having conversations with, with sources like, “What is this? What are you trying to do? Is it POLITICO? Or is it The Politico? And so I remember trying to be like, “Hi, I’m Dan, here’s what my publication is. It’s nice to meet you for the first time. And oh, by the way, can you give me some earth-shattering scoop that can enter the first issue?’”
II. PEAK BLACKBERRY ON CAPITOL HILL
Blackberry Messenger, or BBM, was the hot new thing. Belt loop holsters were everywhere, tucked beneath gray blazers. Blogs were driving the news. Newspapers were losing their advertising revenue. It was a time of change on Capitol Hill, though not every congressional staffer was quick to realize it.
AMOS SNEAD, press secretary for Republican Whip Roy Blunt: There was no Twitter. There were no “hot takes.” And then POLITICO started buzzing Blackberry inboxes multiple times a day. All of a sudden, the hot takes heated up.
RODELL MOLLINEAU: Capitol Hill is notoriously slow on the uptake. Media on the Hill was changing, but I don’t think people on the Hill understood that media was changing. There were a lot of folks caught in their old ways. It was the beginning of wow — news travels fast. News travels really fast.
AMOS SNEAD: There were several times that we were explaining to the rest of the policy staff, to the members, to other offices: What is YouTube? What is Twitter? What are blogs? What is RedState? There were all these new things happening. It wasn’t just one thing. It was like the whole ground was shifting.
KRISTEN HAWN: Before this, if you needed an item out in the middle of the day, the only people that could do that were the wires. So I made a point to communicate regularly with Dow Jones and AP and Reuters. When POLITICO started doing the news of the hour, it became another option.
BRENDAN DALY, communications director for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi: We had to convince our members to get Facebook accounts.
MATTHEW MILLER, communications director for the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee: Progressive blogs had become a major source of influence inside the Democratic Party. We had a big focus on outreach to progressive bloggers, Markos [Moulitsas] and Josh Marshall, and all the rest. POLITICO just accelerated everything. It was a place where you could throw a punch and land it very quickly. Not like throw a punch and wait for three days to see if it shows up in the paper.
DON STEWART: You used to be able to work a story for hours. When somebody would call you with something, you’d say, “Well, hang on, let me check.” You needed to change the way you responded to things because the post was going to go up, and people were going to see it. If you wanted to have an impact, you needed it to be faster.
BRENDAN DALY: On the one hand, you would appreciate speed, but then that became such an overwhelming focus … You know, was it accurate and did it have context? So someone said that, [but] what does it actually mean? That’s only gotten worse over time.
JOE SHOEMAKER, communications director for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.): It was the “Sports Center” of political reporting. Fast and funny and trivial sometimes. That was very, very different. I was very suspicious of that. I was worried there was more of an emphasis on speed than accuracy.
MATTHEW MILLER: In 2007, for Democrats, the political wind was on our backs, and we were playing on offense in so many Republican places, right? We were pushing things. POLITICO’s philosophy meant that you could launch an attack and it would get covered, and sometimes the other side didn’t have a great amount of time to respond.
BEN LABOLT, press secretary for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.): The industry was ripe for disruption, so I didn’t have doubts about POLITICO’s model. Obama was going to run a disruptive campaign that recognized some of the same things about digital and that questioned the way things had worked before. There was a rapid acceleration of the pace of news — the notion that a reporter at POLITICO, for example, could file four or five stories in the course of 24 hours, and that was happening simultaneously with the launch of the Obama campaign.
ROBERT ALLBRITTON: Everybody was running scared, because advertising was going down. When the recession in ’07 and ’08 came, they cratered.
BRENDAN DALY: There was a boldness to it — that they could succeed when newspapers, even at that time, were starting to fail, and this was a new venture that did really well.
ALEX CONANT: For two years, from 2006 to 2008, I worked with state and local reporters at the White House. When I started the job, I was responsible for about 80 reporters from those states based in D.C. By the time I left the job, it was down to about a quarter of that. The number of state bureaus in D.C. that closed over those two years was really gobsmacking.
ROBERT ALLBRITTON: It was a radical departure, and I had to tell people, “Guys, this is worth doing. Given everything that’s going on in newspapers, everyone and his brother is gonna want to work for this thing. You have a much better chance of this working by taking a risk than by going conservative.”
DAN RONAYNE, deputy communications director for the Republican National Committee: Back then the internet was still relatively new. I was curious to see if this was a fad. What’s this gonna be like? And what I found out is that at 5 or 6 p.m., my day wasn’t over. The news cycle went on and on. They ruined the Tune Inn happy hour. We couldn’t go there at 6 p.m. and talk about our days anymore — at least not without staring at our Blackberries.
III. WELCOME TO THE CRYPT: KEEP REFRESHING
On Jan. 23, 2007, its first day online, POLITICO’s Capitol Hill blog published eight items. They named it the Crypt. “We stalk the halls and wait patiently outside closed doors, so you don’t have to,” the first entry on the blog began. “We like the inside dirt, the horse-trading and the personal feuds & friendships that make Washington so fascinating. We hope to prove some myths about the Beltway and dispel others.”
PATRICK O’CONNOR, POLITICO staff writer: John Bresnahan and I used to sit next to each other in the periodical press gallery at the end of the day, we would copy all of the words we had written for the Crypt and put them in a text document to see who had written more words. Often, it was 3,000 to 3,500 words. I had such bad carpal tunnel, I couldn’t even like close my fingers.
RYAN GRIM: Driving people as hard as they did — it’s the thing that drove it. The media was collapsing. The number of jobs being shed, the number of outlets shuttering was growing exponentially year over year. There was a real existential question about whether POLITICO could make it. In that context, driving people as hard as they did makes sense.
KAREN FINNEY, communications director for the Democratic National Committee: “Here’s my story, do you have a comment? I’m filing in an hour.”
PATRICK O’CONNOR: We were just churning out so much.
BRAD DAYSPRING: You really had to be an alpha hard-driver.
KAREN FINNEY: It had a “bro” culture. I had conversations with women and people of color who were there about what it felt like to be the only person in the room or on a certain beat. It felt like it took the organization a little while to realize that that was something they needed to work harder on.
ANNE SCHROEDER, POLITICO gossip columnist: The bro mentality, fairly or unfairly, is still pretty jocular. It’s an energetic mentality. Right? It’s like, “What are you breaking today? What do you have today?” Jim [VandeHei, POLITICO executive editor and co-founder], I think, used to walk around and say, “Whaddaya got? Whaddaya got?”
BRENDAN DALY: They had to work all the time. Once early on, I remember teasing Jon Allen — I said, “Jesus Christ, you look like hell.” And he said, “It’s because I never sleep.”
ANNE SCHROEDER: It was a lot of fun. It was really stressful. The tensions were high. There was so much pressure, especially on the Capitol Hill guys.
PATRICK O’CONNOR: Jim really wanted to cover everything, because he understood that volume and speed were going to be a differentiator for us. We went both kind of high and low. There was a slight tabloid sensibility.
MATT WUERKER, POLITICO cartoonist: It was a little looser. It was a little bit like breaking the norms of the button-down Brooks Brothers shirt-type reporters politely covering Washington. We shifted the flavor a little bit.
PATRICK O’CONNOR: Both in terms of volume and tone, we were so different from anything else that was operating on the Hill at the time.
MATT WUERKER: They were trying to figure out a way to personalize the bloggers. They came up with the idea to have caricatures. There was a choice of do we do sort of button-down stipple drawings like the Wall Street Journal, and instead, we went with a more cartoonish, a little bit more mischievous take on these people as personalities.
BRIAN WALSH: With the early Crypt blog, they didn’t have to have a fully formed story. That took people some getting used to as well. Frankly, I’m sure there was probably more frustration among their competitors than there was among Capitol Hill staff.
PATRICK O’CONNOR: The Crypt was not going to win any awards for journalism. But we put a ton of stuff in there just because we had to keep it going. That’s where the hallway interviews started to take on a life of their own.
RYAN GRIM: These were basically Twitter posts, if you think about it.
BRIAN WALSH: In certain quarters, it might have rubbed people the wrong way. But it certainly led the way for how reporting on Capitol Hill is done today.
RYAN GRIM: If somebody sent me a scoop, a little scoop, I could write 50 words, paste in a statement, press publish, have it in Drudge’s inbox four seconds later, and it would be on Drudge eight seconds later.
ANNE SCHROEDER: One time, I had gotten this Drudge link, and Jim comes over. He’s so excited. He goes, “Good job. What are you gonna do this afternoon?” I’m thinking, “I just shed blood, sweat and tears for this!”
IV. JUST “ICE IT OUT”
The knock on POLITICO was that it wasn’t serious. This was the line congressional staffers turned to in a fight. Joe Shoemaker, the communications director for Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), still has a nastygram he sent POLITICO reporter John Bresnahan in 2007 in the heat of a dispute: “No need to talk,” he told Bresnahan. “Only have time to deal w/ serious publication these days. Best of luck.” Elsewhere in the Capitol, some staffers were inclined to try to shut off POLITICO’s access altogether.
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