Political Rockstars Leave WaPo To Take On WaPo, New York Times

News out of D.C. that could, in time, have an impact on NYC: Two of the Washington Post‘s top rockstar political reporters — Jim VandeHei and John Harris — announced that they are leaving the Washington Post to recreate the Capitol Leader and “start something much bigger“:

VandeHei and Harris are starting a new multi-platform company (owned by Albritton Communications, which also owns the Capitol Leader) anchored on the Web that just does politics (a sort of one-stop shopping for your political news and coverage online). The decision by both VandeHei and Harris is premised on the belief that the “old media” way of doing things simply doesn’t work for political coverage. … Their website will place a heavy emphasis on video, interactivity and databases.

Here’s the key part for New York:

They’ve been given an impressive budget to go out and hire roughly six additional top, top political reporters (expect another big announcement/hire soon) at salaries competitive with those at the nation’s top newspapers. They are currently in talks to steal away top reporters from networks, magazines and newspapers. Whereas the original Capitol Leader business plan aimed to compete with Roll Call and The Hill, the new plan is aiming to take on the political coverage of the Washington Post and the New York Times.

BREAKING: VandeHei, Harris Leave Washington Post To Start New, Multimedia News Venture [FishbowlDC]

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