Polish up your resumes because The Hill is on the hunt for a new White House correspondent.  After five years, veteran reporter Sam Youngman is leaving his post for a new gig at Reuters.  Hugo Gurdon announced news of Youngman’s departure via internal memo today:

“After five action-packed years at The Hill, Sam Youngman is leaving to take up a new reporting opportunity. He is joining Reuters, where he will cover the presidential campaign. Sam has done great work here, first as a campaign reporter and then as our White House correspondent. He has broken terrific stories and seized many opportunities to shine.For the past year he has also written an insightful weekly column. I am sorry to see him go but am grateful for all that he has done for The Hill. Please join me in wishing him all the very best , Hugo”

Congrats to Sam!

The Hill‘s Editor Hugo Gurdon uncovered a sizable error in TheWrap’s recent story on traffic at congressional news sites, in which Politico topped The Hill and Roll Call.

“ComScore didn’t measure Roll Call‘s July traffic at 690,000 but at only 69,000, so the story was out by a factor of ten,” he wrote. “The comparison shows The Hill‘s traffic is 15 times higher than Roll Call‘s.”

TheWrap is taking the correction seriously, has amended the story and is even in the midst of changing the graphic on the original piece.

This week TheWrap‘s Lucas Shaw exalted Politico‘s current business model with high praise and backed it up with numbers. In his 965-word story, he pegs Politico far ahead of other Capitol Hill competitors, with The Hill in second and Roll Call below that.

In Shaw’s mind Politico is God. At least for now.

What Shaw doesn’t explain is context. When Politico first landed on the scene in 2008, there was curiosity and then fear. Until then, longtime fierce rivals, Roll Call and The Hill, never fretted about a third competitor. Life moves on, but it was exceedingly odd that The Hill‘s former Editor-in-Chief Martin Tolchin was helping to launch a new competitor to a publication he parented for years. Newsroom chatter was full of talk of how surprising this was. The real fright set in after Capitol Leader changed that initial horrid name to Politico. Autumn VandeHei, wife of Executive Editor Jim VandeHei, was responsible for the change. Today they compete for ad dollars and Hill dominance, though Politico considers its real competitors to be Bloomberg, NYT and WaPo.

Shaw also fails to mention that Roll Call is behind a subscriber pay wall. Some media insiders claim he’s comparing apples and oranges, that it’s abhorrent to use their metrics to illustrate Politico‘s competitive edge. Still, other observers see it as right on target and insist that Roll Call putting their work behind a pay wall shows a lack of business savvy. “Roll Call will argue ‘not fair! We’re behind a firewall!’ But they’re missing the point that being behind a firewall is keeping them out of
the conversation and hurting traffic,” said a media source on condition of anonymity. “They use that excuse at their own peril.”

Shaw explained to FishbowlDC, “The story’s focus was more on Politico finding a revenue model that seems to be working (for now) and less about their beating the competition. As you know, traffic really only plays one part in attracting advertisers and an even smaller one in generating revenue, but the numbers are still relevant.”

The numbers indicate that Politico is on top, followed by The Hill followed by Roll Call, which, at least according to the author’s analysis, now languishes in last place amongst the three.

An excerpt: According to comScore, Politico.com has drawn more than 4 million unique visitors for months, rising from around 3.8 million monthly uniques earlier this year. That’s far more than notched by TheHill.com or RollCall.com all year. In July, the most recent month available, traffic shot up at TheHill.com to 1 million uniques, but still lagged behind the 4.2 million at Politico.com. And RollCall.com? It attracted 0.69 million uniques in July.

Like a cherry atop a large hot fudge sundae, there is major snuggling up to Politico‘s Mike Allen for his Playbook. CBS News Senior Political Reporter Brian Montopoli told TheWrap: “When I write a story or if I get mentioned in Playbook I’ll get 10 emails from people saying ‘I saw you in Playbook.’ It becomes a measure of success.”

Shaw added, “I hope the main point still appeared to be the growth in the online business and how profitability has enabled the site to launch new initiatives. Unfortunately, I could not get revenue figures since Politico is not a public company.”

We’ve requested comment from Politico, The Hill and Roll Call on TheWrap’s assertions. We’ll report back to you should we hear from them.

FishbowlDC’s Matt Dornic contributing to the reporting of this post.

UPDATE: A clarification is in order. The Hill‘s Editor Hugo Gurdon found an error in TheWrap’s original story. He writes, “ComScore didn’t measure Roll Call‘s July traffic at 690,000 but at only 69,000, so the story was out by a factor of ten,” he wrote. “The comparison shows The Hill‘s traffic is 15 times higher than Roll Call‘s.”

And the final four…

In a pool of sex machines like The Hill‘s Hugo Gurdon and Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson it’s tough to imagine anyone winning FishbowlDC’s Sexiest Male of 2011 title by a landslide.  But believe it or not, the boyish good looks of Politico’s Patrick Reis clobbered the competition with over 50% of the popular vote.  Capitol Hill Ken Doll aka Kevin Madden came in a distant second with 16.3% of the vote.  Tucker Carlson, just shy of the silver, trailed Madden by only three votes.

The stress of the spotlight proved too much for Coral Davenport, Amy Harder and Olga Belogolova.  Citing migraines and lack of sleep, NJ’s Energy trio accidentally moved sexy forward when they should have been bringing it back.  The slip bumped them into second place while WUSA-9′s Kristin Fisher took gold and the title of Sexiest Female of 2011 with 38.5% of the vote.  In case you’re wondering, sultry senior seductress Helen Thomas finished third.

The title of Most Underrated went to Ryan Grim of the Huffington Post.  The rock-solid reporter earned 36.61% of the vote, pushing him ahead of Roll Call’s Paul Singer who snagged  a respectable 28.5% of the vote.

Winning by only a hair, Cabbage Patch lookalike and 2011′s Biggest Self-Promoter Matt Mackowiak upset Daily Caller’s Kurt Bardella and stole all the glory with 36.36% of the vote to Bardella’s 34.93%.  Ouch!

Congrats to Reis, Fisher, Grim and Mackowiak!   And there you have the FishbowlDC Class of 2011!

It’s the fourth and final day of FishbowlDC’s 2011 Summer Superlatives.  Though the results are under lock and key, the winners from our first nine categories are already locked-in. By this time tomorrow, the entire Class of 2011 will have been decided and each unknowing honoree will be a mere 48 hours from FishbowlDC glory (winners and results will be announced Monday).

But before we get going today – a tiny twist.  Due to an overwhelming tally of Twitter Feud nominations for one Ms. Betsy Rothstein and an underwhelming number for anyone else, we scrapped the category.  Instead we’re bringing sexy back like you read about and splitting the Sexiest category by gender.  Up first, the dudes…

This motley crew of spicy stallions proves “sexy” is in the eye of the anonymous tipster.  Like your studs surly and British?  Got it.  Devastatingly handsome? Yepper. Youthful?  Conservative?  Quirky?  Liberal?  Beefy?  Lean?  Check.  Check.  Check.  We’ve got something for everyone but only your vote will determine which one of these sultry sex gods will take home the title (and coordinating Speedo) of FishbowlDC’s Sexiest Male of 2011. Will it be MSNBC and The Grio’s Jeff Johnson, Politico’s Patrick Reis, The Hill’s Hugo Gurdon, Washington’s own George Clooney Kevin Madden or Daily Caller’s Tucker Carlson?

Jordan Fabian, who has manned the Blog Briefing Room for The Hill, is headed to Univision to be their political editor.

An internal memo from The Hill‘s Editor Hugo Gurdon praises Fabian (pictured here at right working hard) and wishes him well. There’s also a comical formal-sounding use of the word “whilst.”

See the memo…

Read more

The Hill welcomes a new gossip columnist to its pages. It’s Judy Kurtz, a reporter at WBFF-TV in Baltimore. Kurtz, who is the daughter of The Daily Beast‘s Washington Bureau Chief Howard Kurtz, replaces Christina Wilkie, whose new job at HuffPost begins today. Kurtz first applied for the job approximately two and a half years ago, but the job went to Wilkie.

Wilkie’s new beat at HuffPost is political and philanthropic fundraising as well as society and style. In an internal memo, The Hill‘s Editor Hugo Gurdon details the reasons why he thinks Kurtz is a good fit (read this after the jump…).

A bio on the WBFF website reveals more on Kurtz. Prior to that job, she was as a reporter for WJLA/NewsChannel 8 where she earned accolades from the Society of Professional Journalists. She also hosted “Newsburst”, a daily webcast featuring news and entertainment. Add being a producer for WKRN in Nashville to her list of accomplishments as well as being a video journo for Verizon FiOS . She graduated from NYU. She began her journalism career at People Magazine, writing on celebs and New York nightlife. Two people she has interviewed: Al Sharpton and George Clooney. The bio adds, “Judy loves spending time with her dog, traveling, reading celebrity magazines, working out, and seeing her family.”

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In a recent memo from The Hill‘s Editor Hugo Gurdon, we learn about a few new scribes in the newsroom.

“You will probably have noticed a couple of new faces in the office, and so I wanted to introduce them to you. Sam Baker has joined us from Inside Washington Publishers to work on the Healthwatch blog with Julian. And Niall Stanage arrived this week to work on the Monday edition with Keith White. Please join me in welcoming them both.

Hugo”

We hear that The Hill‘s Web Editor Erika Niedowski is leaving The Hill for a writing position for the AP in Providence, R.I.

Previously she was Asst. Managing Editor at WCP.

Congratulations to Niedowski.

The quick memo from Editor Hugo Gurdon after the jump…

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The Hill‘s publicist, Tricia Barba, has quietly left the paper.

Barba has worked at the publication for less than a year. She was hired in May 2010, and was the publication’s first publicist in a long stretch during which the paper went without a spokesperson. Barba is going to work for the Liaison Hotel on Capitol Hill where she is slated to be working with V.I.P guests. “As publicist, Tricia has helped greatly increase The Hill‘s presence on television, for which I am really grateful. Tricia has also been a very nice person to have in the newsroom, always cheerful and efficient,” praised Editor Hugo Gurdon in an internal memo.

Before The Hill she worked for C-SPAN as a producer and booker. Before that, she worked for Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.). Unusual details: She’s a huge Cher fan, doesn’t require much sleep and never gets sick.

We will miss her deadpan humor. We’re told that the newspaper will ultimately replace her.