Politico makes a habit of patting itself on the back any chance it gets. So I couldn’t help but notice that our pals over at the suburban Virginia-based news outlet found a way to make a National Journal story (they have a new editor, everyone’s talking about it) about themselves.
This week National Journal hired a new editor for its magazine. It’s Richard Just, former editor of The New Republic.
Politico‘s “On Media” blog sparsely covers National Journal or Atlantic Media happenings as the publications have been at war. So this week when they did, they made sure to give National Journal a spanking.
Writes Politico‘s Dylan Byers, “Three years ago, National Journal wanted to be POLITICO. Now it wants to be The New Republic.” He explained that Ron Fournier, now a national correspondent and serial tweeter at National Journal, was obsessed with Politico when he was editor. But since he decided he wanted to hang out on Twitter all day and night write more, he gave up the editor title. That title shifted to Tim Grieve, formerly of Politico, who snagged many of his hires from TNR, Salon and HuffPost (and yes, three journalists from Politico).
It’s unclear how Byers is basing his conclusions, but he writes, “If National Journal couldn’t beat POLITICO at its game, the question now is can it beat magazines like TNR and The Atlantic at their game. It’s pitch will no doubtedly be that it is more politics-focused than the competition. But no one has demonstrated that there is a robust market for such a magazine.”
Quick question: Why on earth would National Journal try to “beat” The Atlantic at its game when they’re owned by the same company? Unless they are into self-mutilation, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
In short: POLITICO WINS even when National Journal Magazine just makes an announcement that they’ve hired a new editor.