WashPo Still King, But New Sites Storm Gates

Politics isn’t the only battle raging in the nation’s capital these days. Media companies, too, are using sharp elbows -- and new technology -- in a grab for online readers.

The stakes are high. While the Washington metro area is the nation’s ninth largest in terms of population, it’s fifth from the top when it comes to local online ad spending, according to media consultants Borrell Associates. A full $500 million is expected to be spent on local online advertising here this year, reports Borrell, and that amount is projected to almost double -- to nearly $914 million -- by 2015.

The big guy in the fight is The Washington Post, whose Web site is visited by almost half of the area adults during a given month, according to the spring survey by The Media Audit, a local and syndicated market and media research firm based in Houston.

But nipping at its heels is a growing array of D.C.-area Web sites. The most aggressive challenge these days is Allbritton Communications, which has leveraged its ownership of ABC affiliate WJLA and regional cable network NewsChannel 8 into two lively, well-funded Web sites.

Allbritton’s Politico.com arrived in January 2007, targeting politicians, policymakers and their support troops in the company town.This past summer, it began going after the Post with TBD.com, a hyperlocal general news site that has essentially replaced WJLA’s conventional site.

Washington’s digital mediascape may be more competitive than most, having a bundle of solid legacy media sites.

In addition to the Post and the Allbritton entries, Media Audit’s latest list of the top 10 local sites in the market include those of the three other major TV stations (owned by Fox, Gannett and NBCU), The Washington Times, noncommercial WETA, the alternative weekly The City Paper, and Bonneville International’s cluster of all-news radio stations.

AOL’s hyperlocal Patch.com has also entered the market with numerous neighborhood sites in the Maryland and Virginia suburbs and one in the district (Georgetown).

But the big story right now is TBD versus the Post. The idea to launch the “integrated Web-first news site” came from Allbritton Communications chairman and CEO Robert Allbritton, said company senior vice president Jerald Fritz. Now, Fritz said, local news reports from the company’s D.C. reporters often go first to the TBD site. People who log on to either television site are redirected to TBD, he said.

Fritz refused to talk revenue numbers for the new site, pointing out that Allbritton Communications is privately held -- and that the site is, after all, only months old. But he said the site is “on target. It’s exactly where we thought it’d be.”

The Allbritton exec cheerfully pointed out that TBD’s first general manager, Jim Brady, used to work at the Post (he was executive editor of WashingtonPost.com), then added, “I think we would put our ability to cover local news on par with anyone in Washington … We have quite a few reporters and quite a lot of expertise.”

The Allbritton formula seems to be working for Politico, which has grown from 61 staffers at its 2007 launch to about 150 today, according to Ryan, a former official in the Reagan White House. But its ambitions go far beyond Washington. It intends to be the go-to place for anybody with an interest in politics and campaigns.

An annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission shows the company’s Politico segment generated $18.6 million in net operating revenue in the fiscal year ending Sept. 30, 2009, up 63.7% from the $11.4 million generated in fiscal 2008.

That was still less than 10% of the entire company’s $200 million total in fiscal 2009. But it was enough to push Politico’s net operating revenue above its operating expense of $17.7 million for the 2009 fiscal year.

The advertiser-supported site attracts 8 million unique users a month, while a sister, five-day-a-week print version circulates to 35,000 “influentials,” Ryan said.

Ryan boasts the site now puts more political reporters on the ground in the nation’s capital than does the Post. “Our goal is to create the ESPN of politics,” Ryan says. “We have more reporters covering Congress and covering the White House than any other news organization.”

While the Post has long been respected for its thorough political coverage, Politico excels at speed. “We pride ourselves on breaking news and breaking it quickly,” Ryan said. The site caters to politicos moving from meeting to meeting, using their Blackberries, iPhones and other mobile devices to keep track of what is happening around them.

While the Post is the giant in this fight, it is not the sleeping kind.

Raju Narisetti, the paper’s new co-managing editor, presided over the integration of the print publication with its then-Arlington, Va.-based Web site at the end of last year.

The Post’s site was considered something of a pioneer when it opened in its own offices, with its own staff and the demand that users register, giving it demographic information valuable when pitching to Post advertisers.