The Politico vs. Bloomberg Government competition

Jeff John Roberts of PaidContent.org interviewed Politico’s Jim VanderHei on its competition with Bloomberg Government to cover the intersection between business and politics.

Here is an excerpt:

Who scares you the most?

JV: Our core competition journalistically is the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times. Financially, our competitive sets are different. On issue advertising, it’s everyone from the Post to the Atlantic to Roll Call. When it comes to selling high-end subscriptions our competition is Bloomberg’s BGov and, to a lesser extent, CQ and National Journal.

Who scares me the most? The entity that should worry media companies the most is Bloomberg because they have huge ambitions and huge cash reserves and they clearly have an appetite for more Washington coverage.

What about the people who say Bloomberg’s Washington strategy has fallen short? 

JV: It seems BGov hasn’t been as much of a success as Bloomberg had hoped. I would like to think that we’re one of the big reasons they’ve had trouble penetrating this market. Through Pro, we produce a product for each particular vertical and we have expertise in the Washington market. What might have hurt Bloomberg when they came into this market is that their expertise is fundamentally in financial information and New York. There’s a different type of expertise and reader here.

Read more here.