55. What is the interplay between the brand of a journalist and that of a media institution?
Take a leap with me for a second and assume that this question can also be applied to comedians (as I believe it can). Trevor Noah recently took over The Daily Show from Jon Stewart, and Stephen Colbert recently took over The Late Show from David Letterman. Consider those six brands.
Is The Late Show with Stephen Colbert anything like it was with David Letterman, or is the show defined mostly by Stephen’s brand, such that it would essentially be the same if it were The Tonight Show with Stephen Colbert or Late Night with Stephen Colbert? In other words, to what extent do people associate The Late Show with Stephen Colbert with The Late Show as opposed to Stephen Colbert? Is one brand benefiting more than the other from the relationship?
Similarly, is The Daily Show with Trevor Noah anything like it was with Jon Stewart? Is Trevor benefiting from The Daily Show brand more than vice versa? Could Jon Stewart start a new “Daily Show,” call is something else, brand it differently, and yet essentially have the same show he had before?
Now back to journalism — in fact let’s apply this straight to Politico. When Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Martin left Politico for the New York Times, did the Times become a bit more like Politico, or did Maggie and Jonathan become a bit more like the Times? What happened to Politico’s brand when Manu Raju and Dylan Byers left? Is it the same Politico? If Politico stands for a certain type of reporting with a special type of edge and intrigue, then when another media institution hires our reporters, do they instantly get that edge and intrigue? Considering that Politico’s line up of reporters today is significantly different than that of just a year ago, how are they both “Politico”? Take this to the extreme — if another media institution were to hire all of our reporters tomorrow, would it become Politico?
This talent vs. institution concept extends further: What makes the Yankees the Yankees, regardless of line-up or decade? What makes Trader Joe’s branded food Trader Joe’s, if all Trader Joe’s did was slap its logo on food manufactured by someone else? Are universities simply brands slapped on a collection of programs deemed worthy? Is “Question of the Week” “Question of the Week” if I don’t write it?
POLITICO
…
Chief among these ideas is that we live in an entrepreneurial age, not an institutional one. Until recently, most reporters derived their impact — and often their sense of professional esteem — from the prestige and gravity of the organizations they worked for. The Web, among other forces, has demolished much of the comparative advantage that big newspapers and networks once enjoyed. Today, many of the reporters having the most impact are those whose work carries a unique signature, who add a distinct voice to the public conversation. Their work, in other words, matters more than where they work.
…
Risky Business: John Harris, Jim VandeHei, and POLITICO: PART A
Columbia University Journalism Knight Case Studies Initiative
By Kathleen Gilsinan
2009
Individual brands. By early 2006, [POLITICO co-founder John] Harris thought he had identified two trends changing the character of competition among media. One was the very nature of the competitors. Harris saw more and more writers develop as individuals the kind of influence and large readership traditionally enjoyed only by larger institutions, like the Washington Post. He knew many such writers personally. “The institutional brand you were affiliated with [used to be] the most important thing about you,” Harris observes. Yet he now noticed that “there were people who were developing brand names and franchises to themselves that were quite independent of whatever institutional platform they worked for.” The Web had been a part of this transformation, rendering it easy to read the work of a favored correspondent or commentator without necessarily consuming the rest of the publication in which it appeared.
Among his friends and acquaintances who followed or practiced political journalism, it was increasingly individuals, rather than the institutions for which they worked, whose opinions shaped the dialogue. Referring to Time magazine political commentator Mark Halperin, Harris notes that “[they would ask] ‘What’s Halperin’s take on this?’ Not, ‘What’s Time magazine’s take on this?’”
At the same time that there were some star writers who outshone their institutions, there were others who simply made their own institutions. Josh Marshall, a former editor for the liberal magazine the American Prospect, had begun his own blog, “Talking Points Memo” (TPM), in 2000. By 2006, Marshall had been able to hire additional reporters. TPM had broken several stories of national significance, and was often cited in other media. Marshall’s was a small operation with a major impact. More than that, while stagnating ad revenues menaced newspapers, Marshall’s blog — financed by a blend of niche advertising and voluntary reader contributions — was self‐sustaining and growing. Observes Harris:
[Marshall] doesn’t need the New York Times platform to give him influence and the ability to drive conversation among people… He built his own brand. That’s a huge change… if you compare who had influence and how they got that influence in context with let’s say 1985 which was when I first came to the Post as a summer intern.
If institutions continued to decline in influence and importance relative to individual writers, Harris feared, it could be another sign of trouble for the Washington Post.
