Politico’s Warmbrodt moves from financial policy beat

Politico executive editor Joe Schatz, global editor-in-chief John Harris, and executive vice president Jonathan Greenberger sent out the following on Wednesday:

Team –

We’re thrilled to announce that Zach Warmbrodt will be our first Executive Producer for Congress, charged with transforming our Congressional coverage and driving POLITICO’s growth on Capitol Hill.

Few arenas of power are as important to POLITICO as the U.S. Congress. Our reporting on the daily intrigue on Capitol Hill, the legislative process and congressional leaders is central to our coverage of American politics and policymaking — and touches every one of our publishing and commercial priorities for subscribers and our broader audience, in Washington, the states and Europe.

That’s why we created the position of EP for Congress, in addition to the Executive Producer for Playbook role. This position, unlike our more traditional editing roles, is charged with nothing less than harnessing the full resources of the newsroom and the company to further elevate our journalism surrounding Congress. Zach enters this position at a time of strength: Across our policy verticals, we have built POLITICO into the dominant force covering Congressional policymaking. Zach’s job will be to build on that strength, leveraging our policy and leadership reporting and leading the Congress team to out-innovate and out-pace the competitors trying to catch us.

Those rivals can’t match the depth and vibrancy of our journalism —nor the power of our publishing model.

Zach is uniquely suited to this task, and to this moment. He brings deep experience at the intersection of our policy and political coverage: He’s covered finance and the economy for POLITICO since 2012, starting as a reporter focused on our Pro audience. Zach has been an editor and co-author of Morning Money, one of our most widely read and engaging newsletters that reflects Zach’s special creativity in narrating the characters, ideas and power battles of Washington. Like few other journalists in our newsroom, Zach has been laser-focused on beating the competition on the Hill.

The EP role is a journalistic leader obsessed with protecting, managing and advancing our business and publishing priorities. And from the moment Zach raised his hand for this job, he’s impressed us with his lively, expansive and specific ideas on how we can set the agenda on Capitol Hill. We need to engage — and expand — our audience with deeper reporting on policymaking and leadership and more distinct writing that must be, in his words, urgent, authoritative and crackling. We need to organize our newsroom — which features dozens of reporters and editors with deep knowledge of Congress — to own coverage of congressional committees and the key characters and personalities on Capitol Hill. And we need a new level of sophistication and rigor in how we collaborate across the company.

Zach will report to Joe in this new role. The role is intended to ensure we’re delivering for all platforms of POLITICO; Zach will oversee the editors and reporters on our Congress team, and will partner with senior leaders across the newsroom, including the Playbook EP, our Audience team and editors who deliver for Pro and E&E News. He will work closely with Executive Vice President Jonathan Greenberger and the leaders of our marketing, revenue, data and finance teams to shape and achieve audience and commercial goals.

Raised in Richardson, Texas, and a graduate of the University of Texas at Austin, Zach joined POLITICO’s nascent financial services team in 2012 after four years at Argus Media, where he covered oil market news in Houston and then energy policy in Washington. Before covering financial policy for us on Capitol Hill over several years, he reported on regulatory agencies that oversee Wall Street trading and the banking industry. He became financial services editor in 2021, and wrote Morning Money from late 2022 to mid-2024, becoming a trusted public face of our financial coverage at the annual Milken conference and in Davos, and meeting with key subscribers and readers in New York and Washington.

The father of two, Zach also happens to share the distinction along with reporter Jasper Goodman, of being the ping-pong champion of 1100 Wilson Blvd.

Zach will begin his new role in the weeks after the election, as we prepare for the 119th Congress — please congratulate him.