Politico’s “Washington Coup” was exposed in the August issue of Vanity Fair with a story on the insider political news website and its success since the 2008 election. The interesting twist? The print version of the website is what actually makes the website profitable. The “obsessive-compulsive mix of trade journal, Twitter feed, and, quite literally, real-time chat with seniormost newsmakers and leakers” now has the largest presence in the West Wing than any other news organization and is becoming a one-stop shop for Washington news. But with 6.7 million unique visitors per month, the website still can’t support itself with the Internet’s low advertising rates. It’s the print version, with its small niche circulation of 32,000, that has more than doubled the company’s revenues, which, according to the article will be more than $15 million in 2009. This makes Politico a unique print ROI story: a wildly successful website that is financially supported by a print publication, but which wouldn’t survive without the cache of the web product.
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