Conservative columnist Ross Douthat floated a theory Sunday in The New York Times: Politico, the news outlet that covers all things D.C., played a central role in the decline of The Washington Post.
Douthat wrote that the Post, recently sold by the Graham family to Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos, had an opening to assert itself as “the paper of record for political coverage — the only must-read for people who run the country, who want to run it, who think they run it, etc.” But that window closed, Douthat argued, when John Harris and Jim VandeHei bolted WaPo to found Politico in 2006.
Now, there are many reasons a publication like Politico was easier to build from scratch than it would have been to create inside a traditional, cost-burdened institution. But that’s also hindsight talking: from the vantage point of 2006, VandeHei and Harris looked like gamblers, and The Post’s grip on what the press critic Jack Shafercalled the “political news from Washington” beat still seemed secure.
Today, though, it’s Politico rather than The Post that dominates the D.C. conversation, Politico rather than The Post that’s the must-read for Beltway professionals and politics junkies everywhere, and Politico rather than The Post that matches the metabolism of the Internet.
