Big things are expected of Politico, the US-headquartered political commentary site currently prepping for its Australian entrance, backed by German owner Axel Springer.
Expectations are that the brand will save its launch for the start of the next parliamentary cycle, with a ‘Canberra Playbook’ led by Ryan Heath (pictured), a veteran of its Brussels launch credited with creating the blueprint for its overseas expansion.
A driver here is the appetite for growth of Springer, which owns Bild and Die Welt in Germany, and has finally got hold of the UK’s Daily Telegraph.
Semafor media editor Max Tani – who got to interview Politico chief executive Goli Sheikholeslami last week – says the target is Canberra’s “political obsessives and insiders”, with hopes it will take off as it has in Brussels and Washington.
Tani makes the point that Politico “sometimes has more journalists covering politics in Sacramento than any other publication in the state” – watch out, Rupert Murdoch’s emerging California Post? – as well as having grown its teams in Paris and London.
Sheikholeslami told Tani that Australia was “a logical next choice” given the common language and some pre-existing readership. And that, “if they didn’t move soon, other competitors could swoop in”.
Interestingly, Politico itself talks of “expansion to the Indo-Pacific” as part of a commitment to linking global power centres. Also of course, the launch takes Springer into a country that has (Tani again) “increasingly been dominated by a media duopoly” – that of the Murdoch family’s News Corporation and broadcaster Nine Entertainment (which owns the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age).