Politico Expansions Indicate New Era of Media

As leading newspapers cut staff across the board nationwide, Politico is hiring twenty journalists to expand their coverage of economic and military stories this fall for their pricey subscription service, which has a very influential audience of insiders, politicos and other interested individuals.

This comes only a few months after their newspaper, which has been available free of charge in Washington DC since its inception, expanded with two dozen vending boxes in Manhattan, or roughly 4,000 copies, also free to all interested. These expansions are revealing a trend of both personal growth for Politico, but also of decline for traditional newspapers.

When a primarily internet, and subscription based news/opinion service slowly starts moving into the media capital of the world, offering copies free of charge (and not taking advantage of its growing popularity) and planning future expansion across the United States, while traditional news shops are struggling to stay afloat during these difficult economic times, it tells you a new era is about to be begin; if it hasn't already.

An era not of centralized control of stories by the New York Times Editorial Board, but by the interests of editors willing to explore issues in a different light then most within the media, not necessarily conservative... just more outside the mainstream and from a perspective that is mobile, a liberty granted by our 21st century technology.

As someone who has always appreciated internet newspapers and news sites, I only applaud Politico's big expansions over the past six months, and only hope it continues to grow stronger and encourages more folk to do likewise, because the only way to improve the media we got, is to replace it with something better.

What say you?