Mediabistro's Fishbowl DC's Eddie Scarry reminds us that POLITICO is "always selling" and always promoting themselves, even to the point of creating a video patting themselves on the back for being -wait for it- legen-dary.; Remembering D.C. and the daily anticipation of getting The Hotline by fax in the early 1990's, when the Internet was still not a daily reality

POLITICO: Our Story; http://bcove.me/oawud7k0

Mediabistro's Fishbowl DC's Eddie Scarry reminds us that POLITICO is "always selling" and always promoting themselves, even to the point of creating a video patting themselves on the back for being -wait for it- legen-dary.; Remembering D.C. and the daily anticipation of getting The Hotline by fax in the early 1990's, when the Internet was still not a daily reality

The former Washington Post reporters behind it, Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris,
whom I read for years while living up there, are trying to create a wave of publiclity that will create a corresponding interest in that.

But how will they keep that information only in select hands when everyone at the law firms, lobbying firms and trade associations they are trying to convince to subscribe to it can always  copy and email real "nuggets" to their friends who don't get it?.

It reminds me a lot of the problem faced by The Hotline -now owned by The National Journal- in the pre-Internet era of the early 1990's, when that goldmine of information used to be faxed daily into offices throughout The Beltway and people would gather around the printer mid-morning waiting for it all to spill out, so they could grab a page and see if there was something in it that dealt with their area of coverage or responsibility.
People would be positively giddy on days after big events in Washington to see what was being written about that subject, and that was especially true during the 1992 presidential election.

And there was always someone in an office who would try to pull the last sheet out before it was finished printing, who'd be yelled at in a milli-second. Good times!

That was also back when if you saw someone reading a copy of The Hotline on the Metro in the evening on your way home, especially an original copy with the Red masthead, that was your clue that the person you were looking at was someone much smarter and better-informed than the average Washingtonian around you.

I kept old copies of them in stacked banker boxes in my garage, with colored 3M Post-it's on the sides with subject areas written on them that I dealt with or was interested in. 
My little treasure trove!

Of course, that was also in the era of heavy faxing, when people routinely forgot to replace the paper in the paper tray of the printer and there was hell to pay if it turned out to be you.
Email is so much easier! 

FishBowlDC blog
New Video Reminds Everyone That Politico Is Still Politico And Always Will Be
By Eddie Scarry on March 27, 2013 12:00 PM

A new three-minute video produced by Politico touts the publication’s “early success” and its plan for the future. Full of Politico bluster, it’s part of a new “brand and advertising” site the publication launched this week, according to Mike Allen‘s Playbook.

Read the rest of the post at:
http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowldc/new-video-reminds-everyone-that-politico-is-still-politico-and-always-will-be_b100185