In Jim VandeHei’s view, there’s a sure “seduction” to find star reporting expertise. The Axios CEO recollects studying Alex Thompson’s work at Politico, the place he delivered scoops that had been “powerful” on Joe Biden, and pondering, Man, I like that. VandeHei and his cofounder Mike Allen invited Thompson for dinner, the place they tried to steer him to take the leap. Whereas initially unsuccessful, the pair didn’t relent, reaching out to Thompson each month and telling him, primarily, “Observe the sunshine. You’re going to come back right here. You had been born to work for us. You simply don’t notice it but,” VandeHei recollects. It took awhile—practically two years from that first dinner—however Thompson did, certainly, comply with the sunshine.
I caught up with VandeHei and Allen, each veterans of The Washington Submit and key gamers in launching Politico, to debate the state of political media forward of Donald Trump’s second presidency, as information retailers jockey for expertise to cowl the incoming administration. Allen and VandeHei have had a hand in fostering and mentoring high-profile journalists just like the New York Instances’ Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, Semafor founder Ben Smith, Punchbowl Information cofounders John Bresnahan, Jake Sherman, and Anna Palmer, amongst many others. The trait all these reporters have in widespread is that they “mirror a ardour, starvation, urge for food, need to be the perfect,” Allen tells me. “What you’re on the lookout for is the widespread genetic code. They love what they do. You’ll be able to see it,” VandeHei provides. Nonetheless, he says, “I look across the metropolis, it’s not like there’s 100 folks that I’d like to go rent. There’s like three.”
The primary time the pair met Swan, as an example, VandeHei and Allen keep in mind “immediately” clicking with the political reporter. “Inside 20 minutes, in all probability 10 minutes of speaking, we stopped the dialog,” VandeHei recollects, and advised him, “You had been born to work for us.” VandeHei says he would nonetheless “do something” to get Swan and Haberman again, however he’s not underneath any illusions that both are leaving the Instances anytime quickly. Regardless, he holds out hope that each “will at some point once more work for us,” he tells me, “as a result of I consider, all the nice folks ought to reunite in some unspecified time in the future.”
VandeHei says Axios is ready to cowl Trump’s White Home “clinically, fearlessly, not emotionally” and not too long ago recruited Marc Caputo, a deeply sourced, Florida-based reporter who additionally put in time at Politico and was most not too long ago on the Bulwark. “With President Trump, it’s very situational, improvisational, and he’ll reply to somebody who known as him on his mobile phone, someone he bumped into on the buffet at Mar-a-Lago. They’ll plant an concept in his thoughts. It can lead to an announcement or an appointment the subsequent day,” Allen notes. Caputo, as “someone who is aware of these gamers, is in fixed communication with them, is aware of how they suppose, is aware of how MAGA world acts, that turns into infinitely precious,” he provides.
VandeHei contends that some organizations wish to cowl Trump’s time period as a “celebration” and others wish to cowl his presidency as a “crime beat,” whereas Axios goals to cowl him “like a physician, clinically. We’re not hyperventilating, we’re not attempting to place our fingers on the size.” The primary time round, he says, some within the media “obtained means too rattling emotional,” arguing that a lot of the trade veered away from its ideas of “attempting to be truthful, attempting to be fearless on each side.”
White Home reporters are bracing for an additional tumultuous time period in workplace, anticipating a “shock and awe” rollout of government orders. Trump has promised to hold out mass deportations, one in every of dozens of Day 1 guarantees he made on the marketing campaign path. For the information media, there are indications of upcoming adjustments within the West Wing, from the bodily location of the press secretary’s workplace to the probability of new faces within the briefing room.
VandeHei and Allen say they’d moderately their workers not be within the briefing room in any respect. “We inform our reporters throughout all matters, ‘If you happen to go searching and there are two or extra different reporters there, you may depart,’” Allen tells me. “There’s no information available.”
“The place the press operation sits or what they are saying or do in regards to the reporters is basically meaningless to us if our reporters are doing their job,” VandeHei says, including, “We beg our reporters to by no means go to a White Home press briefing…. That’s a very good chunk of your day misplaced.”
Whereas information organizations sometimes reassign workers or make hires when transitioning from a marketing campaign to overlaying an incoming administration, this postelection interval has been particularly frenetic. The Atlantic poached Michael Scherer and Ashley Parker from The Washington Submit. The Wall Avenue Journal additionally picked up Josh Dawsey from the Submit, alongside Meridith McGraw, Gavin Bade, and Olivia Beavers from Politico. And whereas Caputo joined Axios from the Bulwark, Sophia Cai left VandeHei and Allen’s present outlet for Politico, which additionally nabbed Dasha Burns from NBC Information. Matea Gold and Tyler Pager each decamped from the Submit to The New York Instances, as Washington editor and White Home reporter, respectively.
“I don’t know if I’d overinterpret it,” VandeHei tells me of the trade churn, “however there’s positively lots of people shifting round.” Allen argues that whereas there seems to be extra motion than normal, it’s “amplified this time by the adjustments which are taking place within the media enterprise and the media ecosystem.”
VandeHei agrees, citing reporters fleeing the Submit as a result of they’re “sad” with the newspaper’s management. Whereas admitting he has no specific perception into CEO and writer Will Lewis’s plan for the Submit, VandeHei considers their current expertise drain important. “You’ll be able to’t argue that lots of people that had been good, that had been there, are not there,” VandeHei says. “So, that’s a difficulty.” He additionally takes difficulty with the Submit’s recent decision to “cease the devoted apply of publicity for our journalism throughout broadcast and conventional media retailers,” and minimize down their PR crew in lieu of a “star expertise unit.”
“I feel that’s loopy,” VandeHei says. “We wish to get our folks on the market on social media platforms, on conventional media platforms, as a lot as we are able to, after which we profit by them benefiting.” However finally, Lewis has been “clear that he needs to transform the Submit, needs to alter its model,” VandeHei notes. “If he can rent actually proficient individuals who can try this, then perhaps he’s obtained a grasp plan that the remainder of us simply aren’t conscious of but.”
“And on the flip facet, The Wall Avenue Journal may be very neatly beefing up,” selecting up among the Submit’s expertise, Allen says, praising editor in chief Emma Tucker for “constructing a bureau in her picture.” Whereas the pair don’t know Tucker extremely nicely, they’ve met briefly a few occasions, and inside 20 minutes of speaking to her, VandeHei recollects pondering, “I’d work for Emma.” She has “single-handedly made that publication exponentially extra fascinating and extra important to my day by day consumption wants than earlier than,” he provides.
When requested about what the long run holds for his or her former hang-out, VandeHei mutters, “I hate speaking about Politico,” earlier than acknowledging that the outlet is “nonetheless a participant on the town,” and continues to interrupt information. “Politico has the identical problem that each one of us have, which is, are you able to stockpile sufficient prime tier expertise that on a day-to-day foundation are writing issues that folks in positions of energy must learn and must reckon with?” VandeHei argues. “So the measuring stick that any publication needs to be held to is, are you doing that? Do you could have sufficient folks to ship the products?”
