The impact of a major restructure of Politico’s energy and environment reporting teams was “immediately apparent” after the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran, bosses have said.
In February the publisher merged its two, previously siloed teams of energy and environment reporters who comprise about a dozen working on Politico Pro Energy and several dozen journalists on E&E News which was acquired by Politico in 2020.
Politico told Press Gazette that March was its highest single month for energy and environment consumer page views since at least January 2022, the furthest back it can compare its internal data.
It said page views to its energy section were up 142% in Q1 compared to the same period last year.
Politico also said the reach of B2B subscriber product Politico Pro Energy, defined as site page views and email opens combined, was up 115% this year so far compared to the same period last year.
And it said March, the first full month of the Iran war, saw Politico Pro Energy’s reach increase 10% compared to February.
Audience growth to the energy coverage has significantly outpaced Politico overall during the start of this year. Similarweb said global visits across Politico.com were up 2% year on year and 9% month on month to 54.4 million in March.
Politico Pro Energy serves policy professional subscribers, many of whom are based in Washington DC, while E&E News targets decision-makers across business, law, policy and researchers who are interested in the markets and energy industry.
E&E News comprises several products including E&E Daily (for Congress, legislation and politics updates), Climatewire (covering the policy, science and business of climate change), Energywire, Greenwire and E&E News PM for late breaking news.
The teams combined in February, less than a month before the US and Israel launched strikes on Iran and the Strait of Hormuz was closed, destabilising energy prices globally.
Debra Kahn, editorial director for energy and environment, said: “The impact of what we’ve done was immediately apparent when the attacks happened,” she said, adding that Iran was clearly an “energy story”.
She added that “having closer ties” between Politico’s politics team and reporters who were previously working exclusively for E&E News means they have been “able to leverage our expertise in a much more political, sharper way” and produce “much more dynamic and richer and more of-the-moment stories”.
Kahn said the publisher had a “deep bench” of reporters but there had been “a decent amount of overlap” between what they were doing.
She said the changes were “driven by what subscribers want and need and have been asking for”, noting that the politics, ideology and economics of energy “are very different now than they were ten years ago”.
But she added that Politico is “still maintaining all of our different publications and audiences, and we’re serving them in deeper and better ways now”.
Politico can ‘own’ story by coordinating teams better
Kahn said there had been demand from Politico Pro subscribers for more coverage and insights at the US state level.
The Politico team has now created one states team led by a dedicated state and regional energy editor, coordinating its state capital energy reporters in California, New York, Florida and New Jersey with E&E News journalists based around the US covering utilities, permitting, renewable energy from places like Texas, Denver, St Louis and Vermont.
“We’ve had, typically, reporters scattered across the country reporting on regional and state things but also on broader things and we’ve never really marshalled them in a comprehensive way,” Kahn said.
“We have a much more intentional cross-country network now… I’d say that’s a prime manifestation of what we’re doing.”
Kahn also said the ongoing story around AI data centre boom in the US and the energy they need is “the case study for what we’re trying to do here because it’s so cross cutting. That and defence – the war has been absolutely all-encompassing. But data centres in particular are one that I think really showcases our capacity, our bench.”
Politico deputy editor-in-chief Joe Schatz agreed that the data centres story had “sparked the need for us to harness our reporting capabilities differently.
“We have such strong coverage of the tension between the cost of energy and the demand for energy and how the political pressure surrounding AI data centres was playing out at the state level in the US, playing out at the federal level, playing out at the transatlantic level,” Schatz said.
“And we had a number of different teams all covering it in different ways and different pieces of it. And one of the things that really stood out last year as that storyline really ramped up was that if we coordinate ourselves, organise ourselves a bit differently, we could own that story in a different way because of what we have in Washington, what we have in US states, what we have in Europe as well.
“I think we’re doing that now, and it’s had a number of other benefits in terms of how we coordinate on other stories as well. Energy for us is a specific coverage area but it also reaches across quite a bit of what we do more broadly.”
Politico believes it is ‘policy-focused energy newsroom in the world’
Politico now has 73 energy and environmental reporters and editors based around the world.
One in five (21%) of the newly-unified energy team departed in March after Politico offered buyouts to its whole newsroom.
The PEN Guild covering Politico and E&E News said at least 19 colleagues had left as a result, with the impact “particularly stark” on the energy and environment team “whose remaining staff will still collectively produce six profitable publications daily despite the losses”.
Schatz told Press Gazette in response: “We’re constantly evaluating how to deploy our resources in the best way to just totally serve the subscribers and that’s something we’ve been doing over time since Politico began.
“We feel really good about where the team is right now and what they’re producing.”
Schatz described Politico as having “probably the biggest policy-focused energy newsroom in the world” and said they have “felt for a long time, and even more right now, that our reporting capability is head and shoulders above [our competitors] both in terms of the quality of reporting and also our reach within the US, within North America and Europe as well.
“The energy moves we’ve been making more broadly in our newsroom over the last two-and-a-half years have all been designed to keep us ahead of the game in a really competitive policy subscription news environment.”
In March Politico held a Politico Pub event at energy conference CERA Week in Houston, taking over a sports bar for three days with on-stage interviews and a networking opportunity for conference attendees. Up to 1,000 people are thought to have attended in total.
“There were White House officials who not only talked to us at our interview, but they hung out afterwards,” Kahn said. “It was kind of a convening and an enthusiasm for our ability to not only cover the conference but also help shape and narrate…”
The free Politico Energy podcast has also been relaunched, reducing the number of episodes from five to three a week but extending the length of each episode. Outside guests are now coming in for the Monday episode, most notably US Energy Secretary Chris Wright. There is now a rotating cast of four hosts, instead of one person who was on the Politico Pro side, meaning they can bring different expertise from across the vertical.
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