Should the Post Be More Like Politico?

Here in Washington, many are jumping on the sale of the Washington Post as an opportunity to highlight the success of Politico as a missed opportunity. When I worked at the Post's web site in the early 2000s, the politics section was already one of the larger verticals within the site.

Part of the problem with sustaining a politics based site is the advertising cycles are very cyclical around elections. There were dozens of 'dot-bomb' era efforts that hoped to capture just a portion of the online advertising, then would have to lay people off  after the election was over. The fact that Politico has become a moderate success is the exception rather than the rule in my mind. While Politico may have done well in the 2012 election season, they need to survive a dry spell at least to get to 2014 in my mind. In theory, you could say that the Post missed the chance to launch PTI by letting Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon go work at ESPN.

At the same time, since Politico has launched, the Post has built a Wonkblog site around Ezra Klein and a small team of bloggers, and more recently a tech policy blog. So it is not as if it has ignored the success of Politico. There was also a previous iteration of the tech policy concept called WashTech, which was eventually shut down. The Post even hired writers such as Joshua Topolsky of Engadget and The Verge to write a column in print. But the Wonkblog model seems to be more viable, as ESPN has sort of done the same thing with Nate Silver, and to some extent, the New York Times' elevation of Andrew Ross Sorkin.

If anything this seems to be the model of the moment. The Atlantic has done something of the same thing, partnering with Richard Florida to launch its Cities site. But the Post hiring some one like Topolsky or Barry Ritzholtz to write something for the 'dead tree' edition on weekends doesn't do much for me.

Here in the Post's own back yard, the Marginal Revolution site has a fairly passionate following. At least online, I'd like to see them elevating some like Tyler Cowen to the level that the Times has with people like Paul Krugman. I also would like to see Jamie Mottram doing something on the sports side, as he is a native Washingtonian. Tim Stevens also comes to mind as the person who most recently left Engadget.

Lastly, the Post is late to the game in erecting a paywall. Part of me thinks this is a mistake, as sites like the San Francisco Chronicle are actually abandoning their paywall scheme, which I'm guessing wasn't even breaking even. Building the e-commerce backend around a paywall isn't cheap, and you are certainly going to see your ad impressions go down, so it doesn't seem like a great idea for a mid-tier newspaper to spend all that money hoping that paid subscriptions stop the bleeding. Even Andrew Sullivan's paywall adventures have been far from a grand slam, and he has a relatively large following.

If I want to pay $100 a year for news content, I will subscribe to the Economist. But if you offered me a $4.99 per month plan that gave me full access to the New York Times, even with a little advertising on it, I'd probably do that. If that doesn't pay for itself, then I probably would say don't bother with the paywall. Would I rather pay $80 a year for Amazon Prime or a subscription to the Washington Post? Pretty sure I'd rather have Prime.

Highest-Paid Employees by State: Lot of Football and Basketball Coaches

Thought this map of the highest-paid state employees, which is primarily football coaches, basketball coaches and medical school administrators, was worth noting. In my home state of Connecticut, the compensation of the men's and women's basketball coaches at UCONN have come under fire, even as their non-salary compensation from sponsorships, book deals, speaking gigs and camps are likely even larger.

According to Marginal Revolution, the three highest paid employees at the Department of Defense are the football coaches at Army, Navy and Air Force. That puts some of the sequester talk around the DoD in context.

Long Layoff From Blogging

Last October, I got a new job, then eventually moved for the first time in 10 years. Much of my energy this summer has gone into deciding whether to sell or rent my old place which I own.

So it has been a fairly busy few months for me, and thus personally blogging has suffered accordingly.

My girlfriend is currently out of town for a few months for work, so I'm hoping to do something productive with some of my increased free time.

My most popular blog post to date by far is: ESPN Films on Netflix Streaming. In some ways, this is the perfect intersection of some of my non-work interest: saving money, sports, media, and technology.

While I love ESPN Films and the 30 for 30 series, I have joined the ranks of the cord cutters, and have not had cable for almost a year now, so streaming their content is likely the only way I will access it.

ESPN Films on Netflix Streaming

Happy to see that almost all of the movies from the ESPN Films collection, including the 30 for 30 series, have been finally added to Netflix. Some of them, including The Announcement, are fairly recent, and more should be on the way.

My favorites include Unguarded, Pony Excess and Once Brothers. But even something like Into the Wind, a story I had zero familiarity with, was pretty interesting.

Most of them are less than an hour long and well worth your time.

When people say there's 'still nothing good" on Netflix's streaming library, either they aren't looking very hard or they aren't open to seeing something that wasn't a huge box office hit. Although Netflix is certainly doing better in the latter department, adding movies like Thor and Captain America in the past few months, the sweet spot is more for documentaries and indie movies you probably wouldn't go way out of your way to see in the theater.

It is also great for "binge watching," where you get into a TV show that you've never seen. Plus, there's no commercials! I doubt I would have gotten through Arrested Development or Battlestar Galactica without Netflix streaming.

If anything, I find it annoying that Netflix only has season one of shows like The Walking Dead, but Netflix and AMC don't particularly get along.

Podcasts: Essentials

Like a lot of people, I didn't listen to a ton of podcasts until 2010 or so. I listened to Bill Simmons' B.S. Report, and a few other ESPN and NPR podcasts. That was about it.

Then two things happened. One, I read a post by Ezra Klein, suggesting that most podcasts can be listened to at 2X speed on your iPhone. So, now a 2.5-hour rambling Joe Rogen Experience can be digested in two or three 30-minute sittings at the most in between meetings and conference calls.

Secondly, I started commuting via public transportation (30-45 minutes each way) and eventually working from home. As such, my appetite for podcasts went from "Eh, I go to the gym twice a week," to "I have several hours of silence per day which I can fill with whatever I want (preferably for free.)"

I accidentally deleted all of my old podcasts from iTunes in March, so I had an opportunity to start from scratch in terms of what I listen to day to day.

Here are the programs that I consider to be 'Must See TV' for podcasts:
1) This American Life - This American Life is one of those NPR programs that is now hard for me to imagine working WITHOUT podcasting. I suppose people used to schedule their weekends around listening to This American Life or would tape it from the radio? Or maybe it was like Car Talk, which seems to always be serendipitously on the radio every weekend when you do errands or go on a road trip. TAL has attained a certain level of notoriety for the Mike Daisey episode about Foxconn which it retracted, but it is the '60 Minutes' of podcasts.
2) B.S. Report - As mentioned, Bill Simmons and ESPN are the reason that most dudes between the ages of 25-45 even know what podcasts are. My only warning/complaint is that the schedule and topics are extremely random, so this could be disconcerting for some. A recent guest coup: President Obama. I also enjoy the Grantland podcasts, where Mr. Simmons acts as editor.
3) WTF With Marc Maron - The WTF podcast is hard to describe, but is essentially the marquis 1:1 interview show for comedians and actors, but also touches on issues of addiction, depression and mental health. A sampling of guest include Michael Cera, David Cross and Anthony Bourdain. Older classics are available as 'premium' episodes such as Louis CK, Dane Cook and Carlos Mencia. Language is often NSFW, but generally not over the top.
4) RadioLab - I am a recent convert to the cult of RadioLab, but I am now thorougly and utterly hooked. Topics generally look at the intersection of science, society and history. The "Escape" episode was pretty great. Slickly produced, the biggest complaint would likely be that they don't produce more episodes.
5) Planet Money - I believe I've been listening to Planet Money since the beginning in 2008. They have had excellent coverage of Haiti's earthquake recovery, interviews with authors like Nassim Taleb and Simon Johnson, and helped expose a dollar coin program that was costing the federal government millions of dollars. I've given a few 'business' podcasts a chance, and this is the one I've stuck with most consistently and most passionately.

The other good thing about these podcasts in particular is that they aren't especially timely, so you can load up a few and listen to them on a flight or long car trip.

iTunes has also has lots of Top 10 lists by country and subject matter which makes it fairly easy to find more podcasts that might interest you.

Feel free to leave other podcasts that you like in the comments.

Welcome to Widness.Blog

This is primarily a content curation blog in the vein of Marginal Revolution, Kottke.org or Daring Fireball. For those unfamiliar with my work, my background is in newspaper and online media, focusing primarily on general news, personal finance and real estate.

I have previously worked for the Washington Post, AOL, AARP and Verizon.

I currently work in Georgetown as the director for online content at Urban Land magazine.

My personal interest include media, technology, investing and sports.

Thank you for visiting.