NOTUS Assembles Formidable Team for Capitol Beat
NOTUS Assembles Formidable Team for Capitol Beat
The bold new Beltway non-profit newsroom plants its flag in Congress.
Ten NOTUS fellows entered the Speaker's Lobby in January, ready to kickstart the non-profit baby tiger of POLITICO founder Robert Allbritton, who had reportedly put up $20 million for the newsroom. At the time, the NOTUS website was but a humble landing page, showcasing its budding journalists' youthful and radiant faces.
In the blink of an eye, NOTUS fellows were publishing their first stories under the wise tutelage of a world-class editing team and a faculty of top-tier news practitioners paid to impart their wisdom on breaking stories in the heart of the political news cycle.
"With NOTUS," Allbritton shared with Semafor in December, "we aimed to create something groundbreaking and innovative in the world of journalism: a non-profit newsroom whose primary mission is to train the next generation of aspiring journalists by pairing them with the very best editors and reporters in D.C., all in the service of producing the non-partisan, trustworthy news that Washington so desperately needs."
The Fuller Effect
Last month, NOTUS welcomed Daily Beast's Matt Fuller to its ranks as the Capitol bureau chief. Fuller, a seasoned news-breaker with a reputation for elevating the reporters around him. Call it "The Fuller Effect” but overnight, NOTUS coverage grew bolder and newsier. The vibe amongst the already-eager NOTUS fellows became positively electric.
On Monday, Fuller shared a byline with NOTUS editor Tara Golshan1 on a story about Washington Post reporters confronting publisher Will Lewis over the weekend dismissal of top editor Sally Buzbee. NOTUS also welcomed Daily Beast reporters Reese Gorman and Riley Rogerson, who will join Fuller's Capitol bureau on Monday.
Pablo’s View
NOTUS fellows tell me Fuller has already been a force multiplier in the newsroom. "He uncovers scoops in my news gathering and reporting that I hadn't even considered," a NOTUS fellow confided.
Fuller's presence virtually guarantees that NOTUS will break substantial stories, a critical factor for the survival of a non-profit newsroom. The crumbling news industry is littered with news ventures — both for-profit and non-profit — that failed to break news, often pivoting fatally to narrative journalism products instead that, let's face it, rarely pay the bills.
Another emerging strength of NOTUS reporting is its ability to contextualize the political world around us. Take this political reporting gem by reporter Haley Byrd Wilt about a flag I hadn't noticed until I read the NOTUS story. Now I see it everywhere and understand its significance, thanks to Haley's reporting.
It will be intriguing to observe how other outlets react to NOTUS. Politico, Allbritton's former venture, is notorious for excluding competitors from their tip sheets. The Post, which lost half of its audience and $100 million last year under Buzbee, has seen startups like Punchbowl, Regular Order, Askapol, and dare I mention Capitol Press (subscribe!) gradually erode once-dominant place in congressional news coverage.
Consider: NOTUS already has more reporters on the ground in the House and Senate than pretty much all of the newfangled Hill outlets combined. This should make Allbritton’s startup difficult to ignore.
Plus, as a non-profit, NOTUS might compete for the same readers as Bloomberg, CNN, NBC, WaPo, and so on — but they don’t rely on the same revenue streams as other Beltway outlets with large coverage teams.
This is all to say NOTUS is becoming a thing, so watch this space. In a news industry beset by decline and despair, Allbritton might just be on to something here…
Editor’s Note
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Like NOTUS, we launched in January. In our first six months on the Capitol beat, Arturo Dominguez and I have foregone healthcare, groceries, and even rent payments to keep this thing going. Your support means everything to us, so subscribe if you can.
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Tara was my editor at Vanity Fair under whose guidance I wrote my best work to date on the Capitol beat.
Great lil snapshot of a publication I’ve wondered about. Cheers!