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"Jim VandeHei, Kim Kingsley, Roy Schwartz, Mike Allen and Danielle Jones have told me of their wish to move on from POLITICO." A memo from POLITICO's founder and publisher Robert Allbritton

A memo sent by Robert Allbritton, founder and publisher of POLITICO:

"A decade ago, early in 2006, I made a decision to start a new newspaper focused on Capitol Hill. The idea, as I saw it at the time, meshed nicely with other properties our company owned, and with my own instincts that interesting opportunities would be opening in new media, especially in the political space. I viewed it, at the time, as a modest step down a path to an uncertain destination.

As it happens, that step turned out to be a much longer stride than I anticipated. And that path has led to more interesting places—more consequential, more successful, more fun — than any of us ever anticipated.

What we were tentatively calling the Capitol Leader instead became POLITICO. What we initially conceived as a congressionally-focused Washington publication has emerged into the most important national platform (and, increasingly, a global platform) for political and policy news aimed at the country’s—and the world’s— most influential people.

These achievements were the result of a good idea, some good luck, but most of all a remarkable team—one that came together initially through serendipity, and stayed together for nearly a decade thanks to powerful bonds of common ambitions, complementary strengths, and, above all, great friendship.

Within a couple years of our 2007 launch, I would occasionally reflect on this team and ask myself how long we could keep our core group of co-founders together. Surely the day would come when it would make sense for the publication, and these supremely talented people who were present at the creation, to write a new chapter. Our answer was always the same—not now. Maybe someday.

Well, someday has arrived.

With apologies for what editors tell me is “burying the lead,” I want to tell you about some big news. Jim VandeHei, Kim Kingsley, Roy Schwartz, Mike Allen and Danielle Jones have told me of their wish to move on from POLITICO. Jim, Mike and Roy will be here through the 2016 election; Kim will be with us until early summer. Danielle plans to leave before then.

These transitions make perfect sense for the publication, coming a decade (almost to the day) after I recruited them to join this cause. Jim in particular began signaling to me some years ago that he hoped the next stop in his career would be to once again start a new venture. Mike has launched and maintained the Playbook franchise — 365 days a year — longer than seemed humanly possible.

Watching these extraordinary professionals blossom as leaders, stretching their areas of expertise as their responsibilities grew, has been one of my great satisfactions at POLITICO. I will have more to say about all of these people lower in this note, and much more to say throughout 2016 as we find occasions to celebrate their achievements. First, however, at this moment of change I would like to say a bit about continuity.

What I have said to my leadership team is something I want to emphasize I’ll say to all of our nearly 500 POLITICO employees (a total ten times what we had at our launch): We are about to experience the most exciting, and I expect most enjoyable, period of expansion in ten years. With our revenue rapidly expanding, I am eager to make robust new investments in editorial quality, in technology, in business talent, and in new markets that we have not yet conquered.

It is a mark of Jim’s professionalism that he was determined to not leave until this place was in steady hands. That is why we will have a transition that has been under discussion for nearly a year and will take place over nearly a year.

In the meantime, my other co-founder, John Harris, has signaled in strong terms his desire to stay as POLITICO writes its next chapter. John spent much of 2015 immersed in the highly successful launch of POLITICO’s European edition. With that venture now on an impressive trajectory, John is free to help me in filling some of the most compelling positions in the media business after a competitive search that will be national in scope. In a steady and purposeful way, we are going to replace a team that has taken us to the moon with the next team of media professionals that can take us far beyond that.

As part of this, I have asked John to take on the title of publisher in addition to editor in chief. The goal during this transition is to never lose touch with the magic embedded in the POLITICO brand, which John understands and articulates as well as anyone. This title underscores that John will be trumpeting that brand, and rallying newcomers to it, across the full enterprise, not only in the newsroom. John believes in the power of teamwork, and I’ve encountered no one better in building teams. As co-founder, John helped build the POLITICO we know today. He did something similar, with equal results, in leading the team that built a brand new publication. With this additional role, I am asking him to help lead us once more in building a POLITICO that will be much bigger than we know today—one that spans the country, spans oceans, and spans languages.

Editor Susan Glasser, who earlier had signaled her desire to join her spouse on a reporting assignment in the Middle East in 2017, will remain fully in charge of our Washington newsroom through the year. After that, I’m thrilled that she has decided to remain with POLITICO in a vital strategic role. She will become director of editorial innovation, with a mandate to replicate her stunning success with POLITICO Magazine and The Agenda to help us invent new products and expand the editorial and commercial reach of existing ones, and working closely with John to help us oversee the continued excellence and expansion of our core POLITICO journalism here in Washington. She will do this job from abroad, with frequent trips to both Washington and our European branch in Brussels. In addition, she will launch a weekly foreign affairs column.

Under Susan and her team’s leadership, Politico’s journalism has never been better — or bigger as we head into our third presidential election. Our amazing team is hard at work breaking stories even as I write this, from an exclusive interview with President Obama just this week to numerous scoops just this afternoon.

One of the achievements of our current team is that they attracted so many impressive people ready for even greater responsibilities. This group includes Peter Cherukuri and Bobby Moran, who together have pushed our advertising and subscription revenues to heights far greater than we anticipated even a few years ago. Alexis Williams and Luiza Savage are the indispensable forces behind our successful events business. Marty Kady, as the editorial leader of Pro, has become a master of building and growing new editorial products. Katherine Lehr, Josh Benson, and Tom McGeveran will spend the year continuing our aggressive push into state capitals. Brad Dayspring, our vice president of global communications, has already become a trusted counselor, with a calm head and wise instincts. In Europe, Sheherazade Semsar, Gabe Brotman, Matt Kaminski and Carrie Budoff Brown are on their way to creating the continent’s most influential publication for politics and policy. And here in Washington, Vinay Mehra and Scott Rothrock are helping POLITICO transition beyond its start-up roots into a mature, best-of-class enterprise through their management of finance and technology, respectively.

What I want above all is for POLITICO to work as a team — an inclusive, ambitious, generous corps of like-minded people who like one another. This has been the key to every success we have enjoyed for nine years. With the people who are here, and new people who will soon join us, I feel confident that we will have that, and I could not be more excited to lock arms and get to work.

Over the course of 2016, as Jim transitions out and we hire a new president, I expect that I will take a title I have historically held with my businesses, that of chief executive officer. In the wake of the sale of the family’s television stations, and several new business ventures successfully launched under the leadership of my 27th floor colleague Duncan Evans, I have been eager to make the strategic direction of POLITICO my primary professional focus.

I will have much more to say about that strategic direction in coming days at an all-staff meeting. Before we look forward, though, I have some words to say about the leaders who are announcing their transition today.

I have never met anyone in the media business with a more restless, creative mind than Jim VandeHei. He is the person most responsible for the hybrid business model — a roughly equal balance of advertising and subscription revenues—that powers POLITICO’s growth. For the past decade he has pushed me and I have pushed him in a jostling, joyous, nonstop conversation about where to go next. All this pushing and prodding has occasionally driven us both to distraction. But it was out of these exchanges that the publication we know today is formed. And along the way Jim and Autumn became good friends to Elena and myself.

There may be no one in Washington who knows more people and is liked and respected by more people than Mike Allen. Everyone knows that. But I have been privileged to see sides of Mike that most people don’t see. Beneath his genuine “I like (nearly) everyone” personality, Mike has a shrewd, discerning mind about people and business, and the counsel he has given me and others has been indispensable in building POLITICO. Since there are no words that could be enough to say about Mike, for now I’ll leave it at two: Thank you.

Kim Kingsley from her first days here established a reputation as the person who did everything. In the early days, she was more responsible than anyone else for building our brand by putting POLITICOs before every camera and on every platform. But that was just one part of her job: every hard task large and small seemed to fall to her, for the simple reason that she always excelled, and never let us down. We built a publication by saying, “Kim can handle that.” Truth be told, we said that far too often. But as Kim did more, she learned more, and we gave her more, leading to her current title as chief operating officer. In her years here she has developed into one of the most important media professionals of her generation. She has been the force behind POLITICO’s ground-breaking “Women Rule” series, which we intend to continue for years to come. I will be watching with pride as she scales the next summit.

The trait that best epitomizes POLITICO on both the editorial and business sides may well be confidence. Take it from one who pays the bills, however, it is a lot easier to be confident when revenue is surging in. And that’s where chief revenue officer Roy Schwartz comes in. When he hits his revenue goal in 2016 — and he will, because he always does—our revenue will be roughly seven times greater when Roy leaves than when he arrived in the spring of 2008. With Jim, he helped conceive and execute the Pro experiment, which has put our newsrooms here, in Brussels, and the states on such a solid foundation. He’s also one of our best thinkers about the conceptual challenges of a growing business, including how to create a culture that regularly integrates top-notch new people into the organization. While he has also signaled a desire to try his hand at another start-up, Roy will have an especially important role in managing the enterprise during this transition year.

A digital publication, more than any just about business I know of, has very few hard assets—no transmission towers, or patents, or real estate. Our assets, pure and simple, are people. No one has been better at managing people — spotting them, lifting them when they are feeling down, promoting them to the next level of responsibility—than Danielle Jones. Her wisdom, her judgment about both people and news, her humor, are known throughout our enterprise. This past year, Danielle has been instrumental to launching both the Europe and state capitol projects. She was the right pick for these jobs most of all because of her sharp news instincts. In the early days of POLITICO, Danielle was the one with her hand on the wheel for literally 18 hours a day — picking site leads, crafting irresistible headlines, spotting news nuggets that could go viral with a quick blast of the hype jets. No one has cared more about or given more to the publication we are today.

OK, folks. This has been my longest paper since college and for those who made it to the end I thank you.

This has been a lot of news to digest in one staff note. And it is fundamentally good news: an opportunity for more growth, for more people to take on great jobs. It is an occasion to show the world what has been true for a long time, which is that POLITICO is here for the long haul, powered by a team that is much bigger than any of us who happened to be here at the beginning.

We will have a staff meeting soon to talk more about this news, and a lot more about what lies ahead. Thank you for all of your hard work and for POLITICO.

Robert"



Hadas Gold is a reporter at Politico.