Roll Call at 50: A Storied Past, An Exciting Future?

Having recovered from the massive hangover of last Thursday’s birthday bash with poodle skirts, burgers, and congressman, Roll Call today wished itself a very happy birthday.

In marking half-a-century of publication the newspaper, circulation 18,000, published a special section featuring retrospectives, memories, and a special anniversary editorial.

The editorial, in part, reads:

On behalf of everyone who has helped make Roll Call what it is today, we say, thank you. Thank you to the hundreds of thousands of men and women who have served their country by working on Capitol Hill. Thank you for your news tips, for your letters and comments both kind and critical, and for always making sure there would be no shortage of news to fill our pages, even as we moved from publishing twice monthly to four times a week. Thank you for the friendly wagers between offices that resulted in Members of Congress dressing up in chicken suits, and for bringing animals to press conferences, which allowed us to show that there is a lighter side to the serious business of governing. Thank you for letting us bear witness as you coped with tragedy. Most of all, thank you for reading and letting us fulfill our mission of being a “hometown” newspaper for Congress.

And while the publication is celebrating it’s past half-century, members of the Roll Call staff are busy trying to figure out the next 50 years. Indeed the future and potential of the Roll Call brand, which is owned by the Economist, is a more open question than one would imagine.

Documents recently leaked to Fishbowl show that for a while this spring Roll Call was considering launching state-focused publications as well.

The two explored, New York and California, were in response to the feeling that as respected as the Roll Call brand is, the tight market in Washington–what with revenue competition from National Journal, The Hill, CongressDaily, and Congressional Quarterly, as well as reporting competition from thousands of reporters assigned to the Hill by hundreds of news organizations–left limited room for growth.

More after the jump.

An April exploratory proposal, prepared by two San Francisco-based consultants–Mara Friedman Strategic Research & Planning and Joann Gordon Consumer Intelligence–explained, “While the federal congressional newspaper market has become highly saturated, there appears to be much room for growth at the state level.”

The newspapers in Sacramento, California (with a planned launch in September 2006) and Albany, New York (September 2007) would have their own staffs and office space and focus on the legislative process in those states. Working with the consultants, Roll Call planned a series of focus groups this spring exploring the idea with legislative staffs, lobbyists, and other state players.

While confirming that such explorations did occur, Roll Call Publisher Laurie Battaglia-Skinker said that the initial impressions did not seem promising and that Roll Call would probably not pursue the idea further.

Roll Call’s primary revenue source is in lobbying-focused advertising, and it did not appear that the markets in California and New York were sufficiently developed for a steady revenue stream at the state capital-level. California, according to the research, was seen as a likely first stop because its lobbying expenditures are 30 percent higher than any other state.

The explorations and potential new vision has been a closely guarded secret in the Roll Call offices, with most of the staff unaware that the brand might branch out in a radical new direction.

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