Politico owner Robert Allbritton plans to supersize the staff of tiny Capital New York following his purchase of the New York-centric political news site.
“In the next 30 to 45 days, we plan to hire about 24 editors and reporters,” said James VandeHei, co-founder and executive editor of Politico who will become president of Capital New York.
Capital New York was founded by two ex-New York Observer editors, Josh Benson and Tom McGeveran, in 2010. The following year it received a $1.7 million cash infusion led by venture capitalist Adam Riggs.
The site, which has just four full-time reporters currently, has been grossing in the six-figures and operating at a loss while surviving on its early VC funding. The financial terms of the Politico deal were not disclosed.
“We were a start up but it was pointing upward,” said McGeveran, who was interim editor at Jared Kushner’s Observer after longtime editor Peter Kaplan left in the spring of 2009.
Ultimately, Kushner decided to hire Kyle Pope as editor, and McGeveran resigned at the end of 2009 to pursue his Capital New York, ramping up the competition.
He said he expects he will soon have more reporters than his alma mater, where many of his early hires also worked.
Ironically, the heightened competition comes after Kushner made a big digital push several years ago when he hired Elizabeth Spiers to be his editor, only to scale back the effort, prompting another editor change.
McGeveran and Benson will continue to edit the Capital New York site under the new owners as it beefs up coverage.
“It’s a bigger game,” said McGeveran, adding that Politico “will be investing a lot more and earning a lot more in revenue than we ever did [at Capital New York].”
The deal is the first since Allbritton sold his eight TV stations to Sinclair Broadcasting for $985 million in May and pledged to invest the cash in Politico and other digital properties. At the time he said he was scouting for sites that would “follow the Politico model of dominating targeted coverage.”
Capital New York is not quite there with fewer than 200,000 unique visitors a month while operating in the red.
“We’re not delusional, we don’t think it will be profitable overnight, but we think it will be in pretty short order,” said VandeHei.