\n<\/p>\n
Robert Allbritton, the billionaire media entrepreneur, said he was \u201cpained\u201d by the Washington Post\u2019s decision to lay off a large chunk of its newsroom in early February. But he also saw it as an opportunity to hire some of the Post\u2019s most well-known journalists, including many who would have been hard to poach in previous years.<\/p>\n
\u201cOpportunity knocks, and you\u2019re going to decide if you\u2019re going to answer the door or not,\u201d Allbritton, 57, said. \u201cI\u2019m always the one that says: \u2018Look, if an opportunity like this comes up, you ought to go on ahead and see what you can do with it and take it on full throttle, because these things don\u2019t come along very often.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
On Monday, Allbritton\u2019s digital news publication Notus \u2013 which stands for News of the United States \u2013 announced several new hires, including longtime Post political columnist Dana Milbank, Congress reporter Paul Kane and chief economics correspondent Jeff Stein. The company plans to double its staff of 50 people by the end of 2026, a decision that Allbritton said was \u201cprecipitated\u201d by the Post layoffs, which sped up the company\u2019s longstanding plans to grow.<\/p>\n
Milbank, in announcing his hire in a post on X, nodded to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos\u2019s ownership of the Post, which has come under heavy scrutiny as he oversaw deep cuts to the newspaper despite being the fourth-richest person in the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, this is an irresistible chance both to create the hometown publication the DC region needs and to build a scrappy and fearless national news organization,\u201d Milbank wrote. \u201cIt feels wonderful to align myself with a public-spirited media owner who uses his billions to support journalism above all else, who isn\u2019t afraid to hold the powerful to account and who cares deeply about the Washington community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Notus won\u2019t attempt to replicate the Post on a large scale \u2013 Allbritton said the goal is to cover \u201cwhat the professional community of Washington is interested in\u201d, with a heavy focus on the federal government and the industries that do business with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook, we don\u2019t want to be the Washington Post, but I think there\u2019s a place for the journalism of the Post and the mission of the Post without a lot of the legacy expenses that were necessary when your organization was a print-based organization, and they\u2019re just not necessary today,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe appreciate the contributions of our departing colleagues and wish them success in the next chapters of their careers,\u201d a Post spokesperson said.<\/p>\n
Allbritton, the son of Joe L Allbritton, an extremely successful banker turned media owner, founded Politico in 2006 \u2013 along with journalists Jim VandeHei and John F Harris \u2013 and sold the publication to the German media conglomerate Axel Springer for more than $1bn in 2021.<\/p>\n
In April 2023, he launched the Allbritton Journalism Institute (AJI) as a non-profit \u201ceducational incubator\u201d to train the next generation of political reporters. The AJI operates a fellowship program that gives emerging journalists the opportunity to learn from and work with professional journalists and mentors and publish their work on Notus\u2019s website.<\/p>\n
The publication\u2019s name, Notus, will change in the near future. Allbritton said he is working with trademark attorneys and is in touch with some trademark owners to see what is available. He said he\u2019d like to have \u201cWashington\u201d in the name if possible.<\/p>\n
Allbritton, who committed $20m to start the non-profit, wouldn\u2019t pledge a specific dollar amount when asked how much he plans to spend on the Notus revamp.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it just depends on who we can hire at this point in time,\u201d he said. \u201cThere is no minimum. There is no maximum.\u201d<\/p>\n
Allbritton said he\u2019s received positive feedback from advertisers based on the personnel announcements made on Monday.<\/p>\n
While Bezos has not indicated in any way that he is open to selling the Post, despite reportedly receiving seven offers to do so, Allbritton said he got calls from people who thought he should try to buy it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like: \u2018There\u2019s no way I\u2019m doing that,\u2019\u201d he recalled. \u201cBecause when I look at it, they\u2019ve just cut their newsroom by a third. And it wouldn\u2019t surprise me if there\u2019s not more cuts coming at some point in time. And so [they\u2019re] just in this weird position where it\u2019s like you can\u2019t really grow yourself out of it with revenue, and you can\u2019t really cut yourself out of it. So I\u2019m worried about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Robert Allbritton, the billionaire media entrepreneur, said he was \u201cpained\u201d by the Washington Post\u2019s decision to lay off a large chunk of its newsroom in early February. But he also saw it as an opportunity to hire some of the Post\u2019s most well-known journalists, including many who would have been hard to poach in previous<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":47020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[1285,562,205,5756,4258,1105,4316,4317,7194,5118],"class_list":{"0":"post-47019","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-big","9":"tag-cuts","10":"tag-media","11":"tag-mogul","12":"tag-opportunity","13":"tag-post","14":"tag-press","15":"tag-publishing","16":"tag-sees","17":"tag-washington"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47019","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=47019"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47019\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/47020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=47019"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=47019"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=47019"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}