New Kids on the Block
Palmer, Sherman and Lippman: one year later
Have you heard of the Politico Playb0ok? It was created by Politico co-founder, and now editor/co-founder of Axios Mike Allen a while ago. Allen started the Playbook (“POLITICO’s must-read briefing on what’s driving the day in Washington”) on June 25, 2007. He ended his run and gave the reins to Anna Palmer, Jake Sherman and Daniel Lippman 3,304 Playbooks later, on July 10, 2016.
Palmer, Sherman and Lippman have thus written POLITICO’s celebrated newsletter for a year. It’s impressive to see the newsletter’s growth. I mean, how can you beat a guy who got approximately 2,000 emails every day and was the man the White House communications director first contacted in the morning?
You can’t and that’s why the newsletter Washington wakes up to had to reinvent itself. In an interview with Vanity Fair, Palmer told reporter Sarah Ellison that the three “approached it as a second generation relaunch of a brand.”
The results were pretty good. The number of subscribers has increased by 35%, has readers in the 50 states “and obviously, the White House. They’re all reading it,” Sherman told Ellison. The newsletter now has a daily 3-minute recap of the written Playbook in addition to a new afternoon Playbook, the Playbook Power Briefing. Palmer told Poynter’s Ben Mullin at the time that there was a “recognition among our most dedicated readers that by the afternoon, there’s a totally new news cycle.”
I’m always amazed by the quantity and quality of content in the Playbook. Obviously Palmer, Sherman and Lippman don’t produce everything. There’s a team of web producers and staffers that help out like Zach Montellaro, who’s Twitter bio says that “you (probably don’t) know” from the Playbook, but it still amounts to a lot of work every day.
I spoke to now-former Politico media reporter Joe Pompeo about his newsletter, Morning Media. Here’s what he told me about the amount of work.
Today’s my last edition of the newsletter and usually […] Definitely something in some way, six days of the week, I’m working on, because it publishes Monday through Friday which means that on Sundays I have to produce one for Monday morning […] so there’s only really one full day where I’m not working, I haven’t been working for the past thirteen months. Most of the text of the newsletter comes together, like starting late in the afternoon.
There’s two things…one thing, with a newsletter, you are responding to what’s happening in the news cycle. A lot of times, news that’s gonna be fresh for the next day, is starting to unfold later in the day before so that’s kind of like when you kind of have to start to get a picture […] and also as you’re working on your own, my own scoops or tidbits […] I’ll maybe have spent a little time during the day trying to nail some stuff down […]
My routine has been: wake up, the newsletter has been sent out by the production team very early, around 6 AM. I drop my kid off at daycare and I spend my morning reading news and catching up on things. My late mornings, early afternoon are kinda slow. It picks up […] by the time I turn off at around 5:30 PM to spend time with my kid, eat dinner. And then generally, at night, starting at around 7–7:30 or 8:00 PM until around 11 or so, I’m finishing this thing.
Some days, the whole thing gets done between 7 and 10 PM. Some days, especially if there’s a lot of reporting going on, I’m working non-stop all day then I break for dinner and then I do more.
I don’t intend to diminish Pompeo’s effort and work (I was and still am a big fan of Morning Media), but it’s still crazy to see the Playbook being put out on two occasions every day.
Also, if writing two newsletters wasn’t enough, Palmer and Sherman have signed a book deal. It’ll be interesting to see if Palmer and Sherman will be groomed from within at Politico to eventually become top editors or if they’ll decide to leave for another network or publication.
