\n<\/p>\n
T<\/span>he most-visited digital-first news publication dedicated to politics wasn\u2019t Politico or Axios in May \u2013 it was the Hill, a Washington-based outlet that also still publishes a print product three days a week that gets delivered to the office of every member of Congress.<\/p>\n While the Hill is often left out of conversations about the most influential political news outlets, the publication has been quietly chugging along since it was acquired by the television conglomerate Nexstar in 2021 for $130m. Bill Sammon, the Fox News veteran who serves as senior vice-president for editorial content, said the Hill was profitable and had benefited from a surge of interest in the second Trump administration.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019re kind of having a moment right now,\u201d Sammon said in an interview. \u201cThe viewership is engaged, and a lot of it has to do with, frankly, that there\u2019s just so much going on in the news. It is a good time to be a journalist in Washington given the sheer volume of consequential stuff that\u2019s just coming over the transom.\u201d<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the Hill is starting a new chapter, announcing plans for a digital subscription service called the Hill Insider that will offer readers the opportunity to access newsletters, live interactive video calls and other premium features. The basic membership tier costs $5.99 per month (or $59.99 annually) and the premium tier costs $9.99 per month (or $99.99 annually).<\/p>\n The main website will remain free to read, however. \u201cIt\u2019s additive,\u201d Sammon said. \u201cFor the very most part, we\u2019ve developed all kinds of new value-added content that we think is going to serve our readers as we understand what our readers want \u2026 For people who are really into this, they just want more of it.\u201d<\/p>\n There is no shortage of direct-to-consumer subscription services available to media consumers, but Sammon said he was hopeful that the Hill\u2019s offering would be sufficiently differentiated from the competition to become a meaningful revenue source for the publication, which began in 1994.<\/p>\n Media veterans like Sammon aren\u2019t often available for hire in Washington. He became a free agent after Rupert Murdoch himself suggested that he be pushed out following Fox\u2019s controversial coverage of the 2020 presidential election, an offering to the Trump super-fans who were unhappy that the network correctly called the election for Joe Biden.<\/p>\n In a 20 November 2020 email released as part of the voting technology firm Dominion\u2019s defamation lawsuit against Fox, Murdoch told his chief executive, Suzanne Scott, and his son Lachlan Murdoch that \u201cmaybe [it would be] best to let Bill go right away and make acting appointment\u201d, which he hoped would send a \u201cbig message with Trump people\u201d. (\u201cSammon was told the inevitable today,\u201d Scott responded.)<\/p>\n \u201cI have many fond memories \u2013 and retain lots of great friendships \u2013 from my time at Fox,\u201d Sammon told the Guardian.<\/p>\n Sammon, who began his career as a print journalist, has been able to lean on his experience at Fox News by serving in a dual editorial role for NewsNation, the cable news channel that is also owned by Nexstar and works out of the same office.<\/p>\n \u201cI don\u2019t have a lot of skillsets in this world and they found the two weird skillsets that I have, and there\u2019s a job for that,\u201d he said. \u201cYou need to know about newspapers and you need to know about cable TV. Well, that\u2019s actually something I can do.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The most-visited digital-first news publication dedicated to politics wasn\u2019t Politico or Axios in May \u2013 it was the Hill, a Washington-based outlet that also still publishes a print product three days a week that gets delivered to the office of every member of Congress. While the Hill is often left out of conversations about the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50986,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[49],"tags":[794,24947,3222,519,205,16888,81],"class_list":{"0":"post-50985","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-administration","9":"tag-capitalizing","10":"tag-hill","11":"tag-interest","12":"tag-media","13":"tag-reader","14":"tag-trump"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50985","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=50985"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50985\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/50986"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=50985"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=50985"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=50985"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}