Politico Plans for New York Are Drawing Some Doubt

Until last week, Capital New York was an obscure Web publication that covered New York City culture and politics with a handful of staff members. It produced long, thoughtful pieces on topics like the Metropolitan Opera and the finances of the New York Mets and had some media and political scoops, but it also struggled to pay freelancers on time and to get the credit the editors thought they deserved.

Politico is keeping Capital New York’s two co-editors and founders, Josh Benson, left, and Tom McGeveran.

Then, last Sunday night, Capital announced that it had been purchased by Allbritton Communications, the cash-rich media company that owns Politico, which obsessively covers every twitch and shiver of Washington. Overnight, Capital became a curiosity â€" with resources â€" and a potentially formidable competitor in the heated coverage of New York media and politics.

Allbritton did not disclose the purchase price, but the company has promised to pump millions into the New York operation to remodel Capital New York after Politico, turning it from a placid general interest site to one that zealously covers narrow slices of the New York world.

“From our end, we will be imposing the business structure,” said Jim VandeHei, Politico’s executive editor, who is responsible for bringing Capital into the fold. “Our track record is pretty darn impressive. We know how to go in heavy and put more reporters on a beat than anyone else and break news.”

He added, “In the areas we are going into there are opportunities almost overnight to build very distinctive products that people will pay for.”

Politico is privately held, but it says it successfully earns money from advertising and paid subscriptions for a printed edition of its Web product, and from subscriptions to PoliticoPro, a specialized service that delivers in-depth news, not available on the regular site, on the politics behind topics like health care and energy.

Capital New York will adopt a similar strategy when it introduces its revamped product in November. Later, it will offer subscriptions for something like $99 a month, promising in-depth coverage of state and local politics and media. Eventually it may add products on real estate and culture.

Already the site is gearing up. Politico has given it the green light to increase the staff from seven to roughly 30; new hires will include about six reporters each to cover state and city government and media executives. Capital is also making use of Politico’s reporters; within days of the purchase Politico’s media reporter, Dylan Byars, was posting news to the Capital site.

Many in the New York media market are skeptical. New York, after all, is not a one-industry town like Washington and it is already saturated with media.

Kurt Andersen, who founded Inside.com, which tried to charge for inside information about the media and entertainment industry from 1999 to 2001, knows better than most the perils of the market. “Between the multiple verticals in this city and The New York Times and New York Magazine and The Observer, it is a different game,” he said. “It will be tough.”

Perhaps no one is more amused by Capital’s sudden change in status than the site’s co-founders and primary editors, Josh Benson and Tom McGeveran. They met at The New York Observer, where Mr. McGeveran, 41, started as a copy editor and Mr. Benson, 40, as an unpaid fact checker. Both rose quickly.

Mr. McGeveran, lightly freckled with red hair and a sardonic sense of humor, is single and lives with his sister in Astoria, Queens. His focus is culture, but he ended up as acting interim editor of the entire publication. Mr. Benson, married with three children and also living in Astoria, vibrates at a more intense frequency and became political editor. They have kept that basic division of labor ever since.

At The Observer, they built a close cadre of fiercely devoted writers and editors like Choire Sicha, founder of The Awl.com and J. Gabriel Boylan, now with BBC America. They also built an easygoing leadership partnership that their friends call the Tom and Jerry show.