Robert Allbritton
Founder, Politico
Sometimes there is not an obvious demand, but the reality is somebody coming in and doing it better than everyone else will create that demand.
Summary
This week on Leadership Matters, Alan was joined by Robert Allbritton, the founder of Politico who helped to redefine American political reporting. Throughout their conversation, Alan and Robert discussed Robert’s early life and influences, his time working in and running his family’s businesses, and the founding, growth and sale of Politico. They also touched on Robert’s philanthropic organization, the Allbritton Journalism Institute, which is working to train the next generation of political journalists.
Mentions & Resources
Guest Bio
Robert was the founder, publisher and owner of Politico, which he sold to the German publishing firm Axel Springer in 2021. He is also executive chairman of Perpetual Capital Partners, a private middle-market investment firm based in Arlington, Virginia. A native of Houston, Robert serves on the Board of Directors of the Lyndon B. Johnson Foundation and is a Trustee Emeritus of Wesleyan University.
Transcript
Alan Fleischmann
Welcome to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM and at leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischmann. Today I'm joined by a very good friend, Robert Allbritton, the founder of Politico, a game changing force in political journalism that redefine how political news is reported and understood. But over his career, he's done lots of other things as well, and we're going to hear some things he's doing now.
He's led many major business ventures, including leading his family businesses, Allbritton communications and Riggs Bank. He's also an advocate for the future of journalism and founded the Allbritton Journalism Institute to train and mentor the next generation of reporters. And his latest venture, NOTUS, is already making waves as a fresh voice in the evolving media landscape beyond business.
He's a dedicated philanthropist. He's a great leader when it comes to shaping public discourse. He served as a trustee of the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library, the Presidential Library and Museum, and together with his wife, Elena Robert, established the Allbritton Center for the Study of Public Life at Wellesley University.
Today, we'll dive into Robert's journey from his early life and career to the founding of Politico and the Allbritton Journalism Institute to his latest, and to also get his insights and his leadership lessons and things that he would want to share with us and he's learned along the way. Robert, welcome to Leadership Matter. I'm so excited to have you on this has been something I want to do for a long time, which is a special interview for me.
Robert Allbritton
Thank you, Alan, it's a pleasure to be here with you. And I'll throw in one other thing that you left off. I am actually a licensed commercial pilot. Did you know that?
Alan Fleischmann
I knew that. And I've actually asked you whether I could fly with you, and I find it amazing, anytime across the world with you as the pilot.
Robert Allbritton
I occasionally find myself co-producing various aviation stories on CNN and other things, and I never get credit for it. I'm fine with that.
Alan Fleischmann
We should talk about that too. Like, what made you want to be a pilot? Because it must be, you know, source of freedom, frankly.
Robert Allbritton
Totally, yeah. I think it's wonderful training for anyone. It really teaches you a lot of discipline, a lot of skill, a lot of self confidence, and you know, no pilot panics, because if you panic, you're done. You just keep working the problem. You only have one time, right? And when something goes wrong, your mind just goes to, how do I fix it, not, you know, oh, my God, this is a big problem kind of thing. I think that's a pretty useful skill for people to have. And I hate to say, like, one of the things good pilots do is you study accidents. Why? Because you want to learn from them. You want to learn how did these guys mess up, and how do you avoid that? How do you make it better? There's an old saying, there’s old pilots, and there’s bold pilots. They're no old and bold pilots, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
But you want you to do it though, it was like a fascination with planes.
Robert Allbritton
I was very fortunate. I grew up with with a father who had some money and he had a plane, right. He wasn't the pilot, but he had a plane. And I was an only child. And, yeah, you get kind of bored, and what do you do? You go up and kind of watch the guys fly the plane, you know? And so it just kind of, from a very, very young age, I was like hanging out in the cockpit, going across country kind of thing. It was just kind of interesting, and it was something I had always wanted to learn. And when I got done with college, I had, you know, the only time in your life when you have some free time, and I took the summer off and treated it like a job and learned how to fly.
Alan Fleischmann
And was your family supportive?
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, very much. So my mother actually flew with me right after I got a license, and I think she was, I questioned her sanity. Strangely, my son soloed when he was 16 years old.
Alan Fleischmann
And yeah, he told me that he now is a pilot too.
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, he got his solo on a plane on the first day he possibly could. His mom woke up and said, okay, so Alex is gonna solo it? I said, yeah, he is.
“So the instructor is next to him, right?”
It's like, no, he's just in the plane by himself, literally. So yeah, and she's like, but he's 16. I said, yeah, they cut you loose unless you know how to deal with it. And she just absolutely freaked out. And I'm so glad she didn't realize that until the morning of. It just would have been a week of hell otherwise.
Alan Fleischmann
But it sounds like we didn't cancel.
Robert Allbritton
He did great. Yeah, he did great.
Alan Fleischmann
You know, you know, I'm sure the adventure to the ability to be spontaneous and say, let's go.
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, I think there's a little – I hate this. This is gonna sound blase, but after a while, it's, you know, it is much more complicated as a much bigger responsibility. But it's not unlike people who have a driver's license or people who don't have a driver's license, you know. Once you have one, it's, you know how to drive, right? You know, you can do it so. But for people who don't, it always seems like it's some sort of, you know, kind of a big deal.
Alan Fleischmann
Did you have a type of plane you always wanted to fly? Are there certain planes? There's my ignorance here, by certain size planes.
Robert Allbritton
So the way it works is you can fly any plane up to a certain weight is the way they do it. It's 12,500 pounds is the magic number. And above that, you have to have a license for that particular type of plane. So an airline captain who flies a Boeing cannot just go fly an Airbus. Doesn't work that way. You have to be type rated on those individual kind of plays. I have three type ratings now. I've kind of actually probably shouldn't disclose the circumstances, but got a chance to land a 737 once. That was kind of cool, which I don't know of a lot of people doing.
I think it's a good training. I think it's a great mental process for folks to go through. It's a lot of discipline. It takes a lot of dedication. They don't just, you know, I'll give the FAA a lot of credit. It's not like a driver's license. You really have to know what you're doing before they're going to give you a license, they check you out six ways to Sunday. They take it very seriously, and they take safety incredibly seriously. And it's, you know, lots of complaints about the federal government these days. That's one I know from personal experience works damn well.
Alan Fleischmann
Yeah, that's amazing. Is your plane, your favorite plane?
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, ‘cuz it's the one I get on when I want to get back down on the ground.
Alan Fleischmann
Its your loyal partner, I tell you that.
Robert Allbritton
Now see that I thrown your agenda, I’ve completed my goal.
Alan Fleischmann
I like that. Appreciate that's a good part of our banter. I like it.
Let's start with your early life, because you had an amazing, I know your mom, who's a force of nature. I knew of your father. I remember going to your father's funeral, actually, and as being your friend, and was just so struck by how many people. It was an extraordinary celebration of a life. Or it was crazy, yeah, it was huge. I mean, it was the whole National Cathedral was packed, and everyone had a different story and a different interaction with him, and he was a bigger than life personality. So tell us a little bit about your parents. Tell us a little bit about your early life and upbringing. You know, this family that you were born into, and, yeah, where you grew up, and what life was like around the house, actually.
Robert Allbritton
So my my parents are from very modest means. My dad literally won a Horatio Alger Award. He was born in Delo, Mississippi in the middle of the Great Depression, or, you know, slightly before then, and his father ran the general store in a company town for the Finkbein Lundberg Company, you know. And it was interesting upbringing. You know, he was second youngest of, I think, seven kids, so big family, and they moved to Houston during the great depression because there was work over there, and that's how they kind of went to Texas. He was in the Navy in World War Two, got a law degree from Baylor University. I think he may have been one of the first of his family go to college.
My mom, her parents ran the neighborhood pharmacy and soda fountain and area of Houston called the heights. And she worked, she worked behind the soda fountain, and, you know, stock shelves along with her sister. But they were, you know – so these are folks who came from very, you know, very modest means. As a result, they they kept a huge portion of that sensibility about themselves, which I'm now trying to pass on to my kids, which is really hard to do.
You know, my dad was fortunate. He was a lawyer. He did corporate law. He finally decided, I'm tired of doing deals for other people, do deals for, you know, for myself, and became a banker and eventually newspaper publisher. That's how I wound up here in Washington.
But they were always pretty grounded, you know, here this is a guy who, you know, always was religious. Didn't feel complete unless he went to church on Sunday, but not sort of what I call, you know, once a once a week kind of Christian, he kind of lived it. You know, is more about the ideals and the principles than than necessarily going through rites and rituals and always grounded from the point of view.
You know, they felt the value of a buck. You know, I mean, oh my God, my parents loved Costco. I mean, it was, like, their favorite place in the whole wide world, because you could get deals. I mean, and I'm like, he was the only person I knew who would take a chauffeured car to Costco, you know? I mean, it was just, it was that kind of, you know, weird kind of upbringing. But there's a point to all that, right? You know, it's like, it doesn't matter how much you have, if you do not understand the value of that, if you lose track of that, you're in a very dangerous spot, right? So, you know, I talk about Walton's kind of driving around in an old red pickup truck. I say, no, I totally get it, you know, it's like the truck still works. Why do we need another truck?
Alan Fleischmann
Did that frustrate you as a kid? Or you got it?
Robert Allbritton
No, I got it. I kind of liked it. I think I still do it. To be honest with you, I still do it. I think when my kids, you know, when they splurge on something, I don't know. I think my son did like DoorDash the other day for like, a bottle of shampoo, and I almost hit the ceiling and I was like, “What the hell? You can't walk down to CVS and get the shampoo?” He said it was more convenient. I was like, you know how much that cost? And he's like, but Dad, we can afford it. I was like, that's not the point. It's, you know, it's the value of it that's important. And, you know, look, I tried to keep a low profile around D.C. for as long as I could. And people said, why? I said, because I like to go do my own grocery shopping without being bothered. You know, I think there's something to all that. And I like it. Quite frankly, it's not like some discipline. I just, you know, like kind of doing normal stuff.
Alan Fleischmann
And you actually are very good about, you also married someone who's so grounded in Elena. How's that?
Robert Allbritton
She is the best. She is totally the best. She is hard working. She is much more dedicated than I am. She's much more patient than I am. She's much more determined than I am. She was an English major at Wesleyan who decided after graduation that she wanted to become a doctor, and that is not easy to do, because if you're not on that track, and she spent multiple years doing Melanoma Research to become a dermatologist. Before that, she realized she needed to have a lot of experience to get into a med school, so she went out to NIH and worked in a lab for this funny little guy named Tony Fauci many years before he became a thing. He was working on a mystery disease back then that was causing death and destruction among certain portions of the population, later named AIDS.
So pretty close, you know, and I still give her a hard time when she does something quirky. I said, that's why you shouldn't have volunteered for all those experiments for 25 bucks. You know, I needed the money, you know. But no, she's fabulous, and she's – I don't know how she does it. She somehow maintains a full time medical practice. Amazing as a mom, somehow gets me through the day, throws fabulous parties and does it, and, you know, has done incredibly well with it.
Alan Fleischmann
So, you guys met in Wesleyan?
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, yeah, we were – so I knew who she was at Wesleyan. I didn't know, we didn't date. We were both dating other people, and we were both from D.C., so we kind of had that connection. And so after graduation, I would see her every once, again, same town. You know, it's like, not unlike, you know, when you're out of school and there's a couple other grads from your class and you're in the same town, you just naturally kind of see one another. And about 10 years after graduation, we were both kind of broke up with people, and it's like, hey, you want to go out? It's just like, yeah, we did that.
And then she, sometime after, shortly after that, she said she was going to start her residency for med school after med school, and she was going with a bunch of buddies. And they were doing the backpack rail thing, you know, rail pass, and they were going to go wander around Europe for a few weeks, and did I want to come with them.
Like I got a job and I'm working, I said, but it is kind of a slow time of the year. I said, I'll tell you what. I'll take a mobile phone with me. And, you know, I may have to bail out on you guys. May have to fly home, but sure, I'll get a whirl. And one by one, everybody that was on the trip canceled on her. And she said, everybody's out except for you, Do you still want to go? I said, yeah, let's go, you know. And I think after that, man, if you don't come back pretty close after, you know, wander around Europe for a few weeks, you know, then it's either going to work or it's not.
Alan Fleischmann
That was a big decision anyway. But it is, those one decisions that can change everything.
Robert Allbritton
Exactly. It's a binary thing.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. So your mom, what parts of your parents, I mean, you're obviously your own person, and you've proven that you're your own person in so many ways. As a leader, you have a very distinct way of leading, and you've been very successful. I'm just curious, do you carry parts of your mom and dad in you? Do they, I mean, I bet even more so because it was more intense.
Robert Allbritton
Oh, sure. My folks were great. My dad never really, you know, pushed or, you know, like you have to do this, or you have to do that, or anything like that. Not who he was, you know, he left it pretty open. He was pretty big on, look, you know, whatever you do, you've got to, you know, you got to do it well, but you can do anything you want. You don't have to do what I do, or you don't have to follow me in a family business, or anything like that. But whatever you decide you want to do, I'll back you up, but you've got to try hard at it. And, you know, it's funny. I think as we all grow older, we recognize more of our parents in us than we were younger. And you know, so it all comes out as time went by. I think when we're younger, we also look up at our parents as being a little more miraculous. And as time goes by, we realized there was, there was something behind that miracle.
Alan Fleischmann
Like, oh, wow, you really were human.
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, exactly, yeah. So you did make a mistake. I see it now because I just did it myself. They were very, very supportive. I'm watching what my own kids are doing and, and, you know, Elena is kind of freaking out at times. And I was like, I think I might have been a little worse on my parents than they're being on us. So like, you know, don't, you know, don't get too upset over there. But you know, I think it's, they’re allowed plenty of freedom to explore, plenty of freedom to figure things out, and yet they were there as a beautiful safety net at all points in time. And I don't know of any better way you compare it than that.
Alan Fleischmann
That's amazing. Actually, it sounds like the best thing. And then you went to Wesleyan, was that a big deal? You had all these choices, I'm sure. And you chose there. I'm curious.
Robert Allbritton
I was determined. I wanted to go someplace, you know, warm and sunny with good looking girls. And then at the last second, I realized, no, that's probably a really bad idea. And I had gotten into Brown and Wesleyan on the East Coast, and I couldn't stomach the idea of four years in Providence, and so I chose Middletown instead, which shows you my level of judgment at that point in time on these things. But it was a great experience.
You know, it's a great school. I always said I probably went there being a little conservative, and it was pretty liberal, and so I came out kind of middle of the road on a lot of stuff, which is probably not a bad thing. It gives you a lot of intellectual freedom, that places does a really good job on it. I wouldn't say that school is for everybody, but for the folks that gravitate towards it, they do an amazing job of developing young folks. And you know, the record speaks for themselves. Have had quite a few successful graduates.
Alan Fleischmann
You didn't want to go to a business school. You wanted to go to places like government, coming from Washington?
Robert Allbritton
I was a government major on down at the end of my second year and they said, Mr. Allbritton, you've taken almost every introductory courses the university offers, and you have to choose a major now. And he starts listing off all the things, and at some point in time, he says, government. And you know, there's no thesis in government in this university. And I said, whoa, back up. Talk to me about that part again. And so that's pretty much how I became a government major. I was kind of leaning towards them anyway. I liked history, I liked the subject. I didn't think it was going to be useful later on, but hey, who knows? Turned out it was, you know, marginally, at least, you know.
And I thought about the deal, basically, I was going to go to business school, and I got the pilot's license. I worked at Riggs Bank for about 90 days. I hated it. I quit on my dad. I'd saved up enough money that he would call me in the morning about six o'clock in the morning, I'd saved about 10 grand, which, if you're recent college, you could, you can live off of 10,000 for a long time. And he would call me at 6am, wake my ass up, and say, “What's it like to be your agent retired? I just want to know, you know, which is just, was just, just torture, you know?
And I was really fortunate. We had family TV stations. We had a bunch of guys who were professional managers who are running them. They had come out of the Washington Star. My dad was really more of a banker than that, and so he let it just be a professionally managed investment. And a guy by the name of Jerry Fritz, who was General Counsel at the time, fabulous guy, Larry, a bear, who was running the group, Marvin Shirley, who was head of the TV stations, and they all said, “Would you like to learn about what we do?” I said, yeah, sure, I'll have a job. And they were very skillful. And they set up, they said, we want to set up a deal where you go, kind of hit the road and learn this business from the ground up. Okay, sounds interesting. It's TV, can't be that bad.
So I spent two years wandering around six different cities, and doing every single job, meeting every, you know, meeting everybody in the community. At the end of it, I knew 1,500 employees by name, by first name. I pulled cables, I sold spots, I wrote copy. I really didn't want to be on camera because I knew that floats around. I think I successfully avoided that. But I did do a voiceover for a bass boat ad in Little Rock, Arkansas. So I got that one on my credit, you know, it was an amazing experience, you know.
And I came back and you asked about business school, I said, you know, I think it's time to go to business school. And I went and talked to Leo Donovan, who was running Georgetown at the time, who was a friend, and Steve Trachtenberg, who was running GW, and I never forget it. Trachtenberg said, Allbritton, it's like you tell me what you're doing. It's like, what do you want? A vacation or something, going to business school? What are they going to teach you? At this point in time, you already learned it all, you know. And I went, oh geez, you're right. So I'm gonna have to, you know, I guess I gotta go to work, you know, which is pretty much what happened. And the guy who was the TV station group had, he wanted to go make his money in syndication, and about a year after that, he resigned, and my dad came to me and said, well, you know, give it a shot. Try and run it for a while. I said, okay, and took over that business at age 25 which was just stupid. In retrospect, looking back –
Alan Fleischmann
What was it that you wish you knew?
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, how obscene it looked. I mean, more than anything, I was aware. I was pretty aware. But you know, in retrospect, I was like, this just looks ridiculous, you know, yeah, and I spent almost the beginning of every meeting for the first two years sort of apologizing for my age, you know, because I was like, I got to get these guys. I got to work with these folks, right? So, you know, I approached it with as much humility as I possibly could. You know, the good news is, I'd actually spent some time with all them before, so they all knew me. I'd actually, you know, I'd recently been through their shops so there were relationships there already. And now, shortly after that, we did a couple acquisitions, which I think every company likes, you know, when you're growing, you know, and it's kind of inspiring
Alan Fleischmann
Were folks like, I like this guy?
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, went out and raised, you know, few 100 million bucks in public bonds. So, you know, got to experience that, which was, you know, another one, okay, got it. But it was a super fun time, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
And how long were you doing that before you took over as CEO and chairman of Riggs?
Robert Allbritton
So, yeah. So there was, there was one big thing that happened between then. So Fred Ryan was working for us at the communications company. Fred, you know, later went on to run the post, and had been Reagan's chief of staff when he when he left the White House, and my dad knew him, he was on the board. And I learned one thing, right? He said, you ought to hire Fred Ryan. And I'm like, he doesn't know anything about what we do. What am I gonna do with him? You know? He said, I learned a long time ago, when you come across talented people, you hire ‘em. If you don't have a job for them, they'll add value, and they're finding their own place. He was right.
And that's, you know, it's kind of something I've tried to do, like somebody comes by that's amazing, I guess, grab them while you can, you know, figure it out. Later they will figure they will figure it out, you know.
But one of the things that did back then was, it was the time, and this is way, way, way back machine, New World Television had cut a deal, I believe, with Murdoch at Fox, to switch all their affiliations to Fox, and it was going to upset a whole bunch of TV markets. And these were old Line stations. And so there were a couple markets where we were as a weird TV group. We were all ABC affiliates, except for one station in Charleston, South Carolina, which was the smallest market. And so there were a couple markets where ABC did not have an affiliate anymore, and they didn't know quite what they were going to do. And so went to them and said, look, if I can acquire a station in those markets, you give me the affiliation? What was in Birmingham, Alabama? And it was Jacksonville, Florida, which are not small cities, you know? And they said yes, so literally scrambled, especially in Birmingham, bought two UHF stations who were in adjoining markets, moved the towers in built studios, hired staff, hired a bunch of talent from other stations, because they didn't quite know what was going on, and launched one of the first new network affiliate stations in, you know, 30 years. And we did it. All that happened in less than 12 months, you know, which, for all that kind of work, is just unheard of. And put the station on the air, and it debuted as the number two station the market, which is really almost impossible to do, but, you know, it was, I couldn't identify him in my 20s.
Amount of effort and energy, oh god, yeah, I lived there. I moved there. You know, I'm like, I'm moving to Birmingham, because I got to to get this thing up and going. You know, and it just, I came back after that to D.C. with, you know, just a different viewpoint on things, you know, the cities, the city is wonderful, but, you know, most of the time, people will tell you why it cannot be done, right? And there was something about kind of, you know, New South Alabama, kind of, yeah, we'll get it done. We'll figure out a way. You know, that was just refreshing and inspiring and and, you know, just gave a very, very different perspective on things, you know. So that was, that was a huge point. But there's so much that people do now where they just get caught in a rut, you know, and they just keep on doing things the same way over and over again. And, you know, they start as time goes by. You think about more about why it won't happen, rather than why it will happen.
Alan Fleischmann
And you're really brilliant, I would argue, at figuring out the basis of supply and demand. Yeah, do I need to build because I got a sense of there's an interest in demand, and the demand isn't always obvious. Yes, exactly, exactly. The best original leaders are the ones who can see something that no one else can. People go to business school to learn case studies about other people, and it's one saying, why do people do that when we've already done it? I mean, they're learning we've already done, you know, yeah, there's always room for a Pepsi to Coke. I get it. But, yeah, yeah, you know, Pepsi's are not too many Cokes, you know.
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, I totally get it, you know. And there's, you know, there's another split to that, which is, you know, sometimes there is not an obvious demand, but the reality is, somebody coming in and doing it better than everyone else will create that demand. But you asked about Riggs. So what happened with Riggs is, I got a call. My dad had gone up for some medical treatments, and I went down to see him. He was in Houston at Christmas, year 2000 and he said, you know, he sat me down in a chair. He said, I think I've got six weeks to live. You know, I've got cancer, and I've been told I have six weeks to live. And it was just in tears, you know. And, you know, one of the things he said, how, what was he then, he would have been, I'm going to say 76
Alan Fleischmann
Probably at the time, but a lot of life in him at 76.
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, oh, totally, he was, he was on fire. No, he was, you know, full. He was full guns-a-blazing. And, you know, full schedule, you know, very active chairman of Riggs Bank. And I, and, you know, he said, will you run the bank for me. You know, and what are you going to do? You know, your father's dying. And he said, will you take, of course, you say yes.
You know, I had a couple secret weapons. One was Larry, a bear, who's a guy I mentioned before, who was around the TV stations. Well, Larry was an old banker. You know, he was an old commercial banker. And I went to Larry, I said, Larry, this is the deal. And, like, we all kind of called my dad the boss. I don't know why it is either the boss or the chairman, and it was just a name that kind of stuck inside, like, I said, look, I gotta tell you, the boss wants to do it. Like I can't do it unless you're in with me on this thing. He said, of course I am, you know, it's just like, you know, there's no thinking, no hesitation. And I said, because I don't know beans about thinking, but at least you do, you know. And so we kind of rolled up our sleeves. He went up to Sloan Kettering, went through 14 hour plus surgery that they probably shouldn't have done on somebody of that age. Took him a year to recover, you know. And he lived for another 12, 14 years after that.
But he also said, like, I can't go, but I can't go back to work. In effect, like, I just, you know, I don't have that. It took the energy out of him, took him a year to recover, you know. And it's like, that's a big surgery for somebody at that point in time in life, you know, um, and so, you know, we're running the bank. And it was, you know, it was fine, it was a wonderful institution with a ton of history behind it and a ton of promise and possibilities. It needed a lot of updating, you know, I mean, there were lots of cobwebs around there, you know, but we were in the process of doing that. And I, you know, had a very large international book of business, right.
Alan Fleischmann
Oh, almost, almost all of them, right, yeah.
Robert Allbritton
And I was on my honeymoon in Lake Como Italy, at Villa Este, which is probably one of the most idyllic places you could possibly imagine on Earth. There's a reason they filmed one of the Star Wars films there. You know, just amazing. And I got a call from Larry, and he said, you know, the we've got some bank regulators, and they've discovered these accounts from a guy that apparently we have at the bank that I didn't know, from a guy named Ugarte. I said, well, who? I said, what's the big deal? Who the hell is Ugarte? He said, well, the problem is, is that the bank officer opened them using their legal name, and they said, you know, in that culture, the middle name is first, and the first name is the middle it says, well, what's the guy's name? He says, Augusto Pinochet, Ugarte.
Oh, well, I'm glad on my vacation, you got to handle this. Yeah, exactly. And, you know, look, I mean, that was a three ring circus, you know, that I got a full fire hose worth of how to deal with crisis management and all that kind of nonsense. And, you know, I used to set my alarm clock for three o'clock every afternoon because I knew somebody was going to leak something and I was going to have to dig for the facts for Wall Street Journal reporter between, you know, three and five for deadline. And every single day, it's like this, you know, which gets real old real fast, but you learn a lot from it.
And I distinctly remember Bob Sloan, who was running Sibley Hospital at the time, who was on my board, and fabulous, fabulous guy, he, you know, he told me, he said, he said, you'll look back on this, you know, and realize you learned a lot, you know. And in the middle of a firefight, no one's gonna admit that, you know, they just looked at him like you are insane. You know, there is no way, you know, I'm gonna think of it that way.
Alan Fleischmann
It’s a badge of honor.
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, with a couple decades of time, you know, the therapy is working, you know, and it's all fine. But yeah, he did learn a lot of interesting stuff,
Alan Fleischmann
You guys sold it, I guess, after that. Oh, it wasn't
Robert Allbritton
Oh it wasn’t hard, one of the terms that not a lot of people know that I have with my dad. I said, look, I will come and run this bank. But I said, this is not my going to be my career, is not going to be my future. I said, so you have 40% of the shares. You are effectively the controlling shareholder of a public company. So I said, I need to know what your price is, that you would be satisfied if I can improve the quality of this bank to get to the point where you would be willing to sell this bank. And he told me, and I said, I can live with that. So I had a goal, which was, look, you know, which was, quite frankly, as a public CEO, it was exactly the right goal. It was to increase shareholder value. I mean, there was nothing, you know, nefarious about it at all, but I did have to know from the guy who actually owned the shares, like, am I wasting my time? Or is this an achievable goal, you know? And so that was kind of what we worked on. And he got his price at the end of the day. We, in spite of all the, you know, some weight, of all the ugliness, and PNC bought it, it was a good deal for the Riggs shareholders. It was a good deal for everybody, you know. And it all worked out.
Alan Fleischmann
And when history is told looking back, and I know when you went through that was not easy, it still has this identity that even PNC didn't ever know.
Robert Allbritton
And it's kind of a whole bunch of stuff. But you know, the one thing I told everybody, I said, I do not take lightly the idea of selling and effectively eradicating a 156 year old name. You know, I'm a student of history. I love history, that is the worst part of this. But that being said, it's the right thing to do, you know? And the other thing I learned from it was one person lying and one person stealing in a large organization can destroy an organization, and one person is all it takes. And it's, you know, if you're running a big company, it's terrifying, you know, if you really think about it, because you have no idea what folks are doing.
Alan Fleischmann
I say that to clients all the time, one person can change their culture. You can work it with the 35 people in your organization, or 35,000 or 350,000. One person can make a terrible difference, actually, absolutely, yeah.
Robert Allbritton
But the terrible one is more quick, and that's, you know, that's life, right? That's a market economy, companies like, that's just the way it's gonna be. But it's, you know, if you're, if you're up at the top, it's a little terrifying.
Alan Fleischmann
It’s lonely at the top, too. It's why, when you said, do this, I'm gonna bring this guy with me, or Larry, is that you're saying, I know a trusted relationship with someone who's already greatly proven his devotion, his leadership, and skills.
Robert Allbritton
yeah, and, by the way, and I didn't have the hubris to think I knew how to do everything either, you know, it's like, you know, look, I know what I'm good at, I know what I'm not good at, and I ain't good at this, you know. But I can, you know, I can provide you with some pretty good basic guidance, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
Robert, were you running Allbritton Communications while you were doing –
Robert Allbritton
I was, and I have to tell you how crazy it was. I would go in. I was an odd duck owner. I would actually sit in editorial meetings, and I never said it, you know. And at first, I think some reporters kind of cringed at it, but the longer I was there, the more they realized, like, okay, this guy's actually here just to back me up and help me. He's not there to criticize me or make changes, because I never did. And quite frankly, I, throughout my career there, I've always said, look, the responsibility of the publisher or the owners like you say something under a handful of circumstances. One is, if you know that it is factually inaccurate and you have evidence to back that up, what is about to be reported, you have a you have responsibility to say something. Second is, if what is about to happen will have an existential risk to the publication, like you have a responsibility to say something, because it's not just about one reporter's story, it's about everybody whose reputation is collectively tied to that organization, you know, but that's about it, you know. Other than that, it's like, you know, I'm not there to tell you what to do. Kind of thing I went, but I went to those meetings for sanity. I went to newsroom meetings because I thought it was much more sane than looking at what was going on inside a bank. You know, it was like, it was this bizarre, you know, world turned upside down, kind of thing.
Alan Fleischmann
You know, you were still with, so when you sold to PNC Riggs Bank side, you still, obviously had Allbritton Communications.
Robert Allbritton
Well, yeah, I had two jobs, yeah. For all practical purposes, I had two jobs, and I was, and I was very happy that the TV was, and I'd kind of gotten to the point where, you know, I've been doing it long enough, at that point in time, how many years, it was eight, nine years, you know, where it was like, this wasn't, you know, I could do it. We had great people who were working there. It wasn't, you know, I could do that. And, like I said, I wasn't going to be one of those guys running a bank where I was, I was in there, you know, looking at every loan, or attending every, you know, attending every credit committee meeting or anything like that.
So it's like, no, I can give you some big time guidance on, you know, on global things, you know, what should we do with systems? You know, where should we put our emphasis? What you know can work, what cannot work, kind of, you know, around and we were, it was too bad, because I think we were really on the verge of not only modernizing Riggs, but almost leapfrogging everybody that was there. We put some pretty big investments in the systems and tech. We had, you know, had some very different ideas on customer service on a retail basis. And, you know, how do you go about actually deploying? And the book of business at banks was fabulous. I mean, it was ridiculously good. Nobody had it, you know. And it was a great market. And I think it could have been a real standout regional player. Would it still be around today? I doubt it. I mean, so many of the regionals are, you know, it was just a matter. I think it was a matter of time before the bank of that size kind of had to go one way or the other. It either had to get very, very big or go away.
Alan Fleischmann
You know, yeah, you're acquiring others, or you would have been acquired or you got it, yeah, yeah. But on Politico for a moment, because, yeah, you were still doing Allbritton Communications. You now sold the bank, and you created something that wasn't part of Allbritton Communications, right?
Robert Allbritton
It was a separate, no, it was totally different. And it was, it came out of, you know, we were, we'd been talking for years about ancillary businesses and other ways we could kind of leverage the assets that we had and, you know, and we have these presence in these markets. And, you know, when I came to Washington, it's because my dad bought the Washington Star, and he had to sell the Star because it was the FCC has a cross ownership rule. You can only own one of a, you know, TV, radio or newspaper per city and when I was a kid, he said, you know, which one do you think I had to keep us and keep the TV, because it's, you know, it's just it makes money. Yeah, you knew that I was a kid, yeah.
But he was very open. He was he, he would talk about business even when I was very young. And it's like, I always like, come into a meeting, sit, listen, kind of thing. So the apprenticeships started very early. He'd already decided the same thing. So it was pretty easy, you know, yeah, agreeing with the boss when they've already met their mom. And but, you know, it was coming in there. We were looking for things to do. And Jerry Fritz brought up, he said, you know, they're these Capitol Hill newspapers. You know, it's like we could, we could buy one of those. Okay, I said. Well, I thought we could own a newspaper in D.C. So, no, no. He said, they don't publish on a regular schedule. They publish on a Capitol Hill schedule, so they don't fall under the rule, yeah. So I didn't know that. And so started Fred Ryan, sort of negotiated with Jimmy Finkelstein, who, at that point in time, owned The Hill and and every time that Fred would have another conversation with Jimmy, the price for The Hill went up by about 5 million bucks, you know. And, you know, after a while, we started laughing, like Fred quit calling him, this is getting too expensive, you know, there's no way.
We finally got to the point where we kind of look at one another, said, you know, like, how much would it cost to just start one of these damn things? Like, you know, this is, you know, this price is getting to be insane. And so ran into Marty Tolchin, who had helped Jimmy start The Hill the first time around. And Marty said, well, I'll be your consultant. I'll help you start it. Marty was a great old New York Times guy, you know. And so Marty proceeded to start getting deals put together, and he was hiring staff and, you know, and finding a place for the paper to be and come up with a name, and, you know, designing pages and all this and, and there was a moment where, you know, Marty started doing interviews.
They said, well, Marty, what are you up to? Well, I'm going to start this, you know, this other Capitol Hill paper. It'll be the third paper, you know. He says, You know, I don't think it'll be competitive with Roll Call, or The Hill. They're very, very good, you know, they're very good. There's no way to beat them, but it'll be in third place. It'll make a bit of money. It'll be fine, you know. And I'm listening to this going like, yeah, that's not really the way I roll, you know. And, you know, that doesn't sound so good.
And Marty was looking for an editor and couldn't find one, couldn't find one, couldn't find one, couldn't find one, and finally pulled a Dick Cheney, you know, I've got the purgator, I'll be your editor, you know. And I woke up the middle of that night cold sweat. Elena said, what is wrong? I said, Marty, told him he will not be the editor of this paper. There is no way, after claiming his goal in life is to be third place, you know. And so we started looking around and ran into Jim Van de Hei, who, and John Harris, who were giving some serious consideration to doing a totally online paper. And ours was originally going to be printed with an online component. Theirs was just going to be all online, that was all online. That was the idea they had. And they, they had a great editorial vision for what, you know, what could be. And I said, look. I said, I get that. But, you know, like, and they were, they were really nervous because Hot Soup, which was a site that kind of was their idea of a great site, had started recently, and I think it was on the verge of, was on the verge of collapsing, and it was just, it was kind of a classic thing where folks who've got a an amazing journalistic talent, but did not have experience running a business, you know, not unlike so many chefs that start a restaurant, you know, like it's a hard transition, or, in the case of my wife, a doctor who run a medical practice, like, there's that's a different skill set, you know? And said, look, we've, I've got this paper ready to go. We're about to launch it. We've got deals in place. I even have a small staff. It's like, I've got a physical place. All you have to do is come in and apply your editorial vision to it, and you're ready to go. And so we came to an agreement late November, and the first published in the first issue was around State of the Union, which would have been late January. So 60 days later, after leaving the post, there was, there wasn't going, you know, it was, it was just in, you know, in commercial world, that's a blink of an eye.
Alan Fleischmann
That's huge. I mean, there was, you had an original idea to do something, but there was somebody out there with David Bradley had it, right? Oh yeah. There was their online, their National Journal,
Robert Allbritton
And Ninja for years, you know. And they had the hotline.
Alan Fleischmann
Yep, had the hotline. I thought hotline to me, and David would hate me for saying it, but hotline to me was something that, if they'd done it differently, it may not have been a Politico, right? Yeah, exactly because, yes, they and he'll say that. I mean, it didn't innovate. It owned and owned, really owned, right area, but then it left gaps where others should come in, and that's where you came in.
Robert Allbritton
Pretty much, yeah, you know, it was, you know, I'm not so sure, and we were doing anything that was revolutionary. It was that it was, it was scoopier, it was faster, it was more conversational, it was more fun, yeah, you know. And it was like, you know, we all sort of said, look, this does this stuff doesn't have to be boring to read, you know. And you kind of forget, you know, there was, there was an age way, way, way, way, way back when, when sports reporting was pretty dry, you know, it was just scores, you know, it was just almost read like a fact sheet kind of thing, you know. And then at some point in time, a couple guys said, hey, we actually have fun with this is sports. It's supposed to be fun. And so, you know, literally, we'd go around saying, hey, we want to be the ESPN of politics, you know. And not only is it kind of fun and flashy and all that, but like, you know. And they said, well, what do you mean by that? I said, well, ESPN, they're interested in the game, but they don't have a favorite team, you know. And we don't have a favorite team either, you know. We're just interested in, you know, well, who made the best play that day, and really –
Alan Fleischmann
And hearing it, and having it happen, and who's there and all that.
Robert Allbritton
And you can't be insidery enough, you know? I mean, you just can't, you know, the more you are, the better kind of thing. And I think that's what was a huge difference. So the whole business model was like pitching editorial to, you know, a short list of maybe 8,000 people around DC who actually, you know, are highly influential and make decisions and, you know, have votes and can actually get stuff done. Whereas every other media publication I know of pitches for the largest audience, not the highest quality of audience. Turns out, if you pitch for the highest quality audience, you'll get the masses to come along too.
Alan Fleischmann
They'll bring them along. They come along. They're sticky.
Robert Allbritton
And they come along for the ride, you know? Because it's like they, you know, everybody wants to be on the inside. Everybody wants to kind of have a front row seat, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
So yes, you did a lot of things that there were like, wow, never thought of that. You know, when you went global, when you went countrywide. I mean, all of a sudden the idea of Politico was such a Washington phenomenon, the idea that when you when you chose other places, both in this country, but then in Europe, yeah, that was Earth shattering.
Robert Allbritton
So Europe was where, kind of, Jim and Mike and I kind of went separate ways. They, and I don't blame them, it wasn't, we went separate ways other than just intellectually. I don't blame them for this. You know, they were, they were creatures of American politics, right? You know, and so you go to Brussels, my lord, Brussels, to somebody who covers American politics. It's like watching paint dry, you know, I'll never forget this. We went over there to kind of talk to people about the scene, and I was in a cab, you know, with those guys. And Mike turned to Jim. He said, Jimmy, if you assign me to work over here, please just shoot me first. There is no way I can do this, you know, kind of thing. And I was sitting there thinking to myself, like, I guess all I could think of was, like, you're right, and every single publication would send, like, it wasn't even second prize. It was like, third prize, you know, you'll be head of the Brussels Bureau. You know, totally sleepy.
But I kept on saying, do you realize that these guys in this town control more money, more regulations than D.C.? Yeah, I was like, this is, you know, you don't think there's stories here, you know, this is nuts. And so, you know, it's like, we've talked to these guys, half of them are characters. They just, they've never got any sunshine, right? And I think it was indicative. Is the first story that we ran. We actually bought an existing paper and rebranded it, and thank God, Shaharad Simsa came along for the ride, and she was the previous owner, and she stayed on his publishers, amazing woman, and, you know. And quite frankly, brought in Axel Springer because I had done banking in London before, and I knew damn well you don't go as an American to Europe and tell them about their politics. They're going to kill you, you know. So you go with a strong European partner, because that's the way you're going to be that, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
And when you look back and you realize that years later, there was a trusted relationship. So totally, yeah, Axel Springer is looking for a publication. They bought Business Insider. Now they're looking for another, maybe it's Axios. But who do I know? Who do I trust, and who do I believe exactly my partner is in Europe.
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, no, exactly. So it all made sense, right? You know, and we got to know him. I got to know him for seven years. I was like, these are really good people. You know, they have good values. They're, you know, they're not crazy. But, you know, when we were looking at Brussels, I was sitting there going, are you kidding me? There's no way you don't have great stories here. The first story that publication ran was they ran two stories side by side, right? They went in, and Jean-Claude Juncker gave them an interview. He was running the EC at the time. And the first thing he did is he complained about that he had kidney stones, and he complained about the massive narcotics that they were giving him because of the pain of the kidney stones, right? And so you can see this coming now. So there were two stories that were, one was a serious one, you know, map for Europe's future. And then. The second one was Juncker runs EU on drugs, you know, you know, this press guy called up, you know, has to complain. He says, he says, I have to complain about the story. You know, this is okay, fine, but what did he think about it? He said he loved it, okay, you know, like this is gonna work.
Alan Fleischmann
You didn't come with sugar, you came with spice.
Robert Allbritton
Exactly. But, yeah, you know, we got to know Axel Springer that way too. And they were just, you know, a fabulous group of folks, and very added into the equation.
Alan Fleischmann
And then you did this incredible thing. You sold it for over a billion dollars, yeah, to custodians who actually cared deeply about it. So, yes, you know, which in the world of journalism, which I do want to talk to you about. You know, it changed so dramatically. I want to hear what you're doing now. I also want to hear what you're thinking is going on. I mean, we're living in a time right now where AP gets kicked out of the White House. Jeff Bezos announces that new voice in the editorial page of the Washington Post. I'm not sure what he said, and so I'd love to hear your interpretation of what that means. And then, you know, how does digital journalism work? And how do we make sure we understand truth and we can find sources for truth? What does that mean? And then, gosh, I mean, all this stuff is, I want to, yeah, first of all, the whole deal.
Robert Allbritton
So, I mean, I think first maybe tackle the White House Correspondents Association and getting kicked out of the White House or, you know, or whatever the hell's going on. I say stuff like this, and I become very unpopular, right? I'm just telling you what I'm what I'm looking at herek. I think there's a huge part of the press corps that feels as though there is some sort of right to be front and center underneath the nose of the president all the time. I think it has served most administrations for that to be the case. I think it will continue to serve this administration for that to continue to be the case.
You know, the previous Trump White House had two press secretaries. They had the press secretary, and then they had Donald Trump, you know, who would famously do his own press. I assume he'll continue to do the same. I think the way he does it tactically, it works for him. I don't think he's going to change. I think that if you go look at the legality of it, which is, I think what's being argued, you know, there's no legal, there's nothing in the first amendment that says that the press has to be allowed into CIA headquarters anytime they want, you know. And people say, well, it's not CIA headquarters, it's the White House. I said, yeah, and you don't think they know, you don't think they have bigger secrets than the CIA does? So why are you allowed in there? You know?
So I think it really is kind of at the pleasure of the White House. Now, I don't think that it serves democracy well for them to choose their own reporters. I think they will come to regret it as time goes by. But I think we are going to have to deal with that experiment as this experiment in American democracy continues, to see exactly what becomes of it. I think that it is entirely possible to cover the West Wing. If you're not at the White House, you don't physically have to be there. Maggie Haberman, who worked for us at Politico and has done an amazing job at the New York Times, lives in New York. She's done a better job covering Donald Trump than 99% of the other journalists out there, right? So it's not, it's not like you have to be there. Is it disruptive to the way things have been? Yes, it is, and no one likes change, right? And is this a change for the better? I don't think so.
But I think it's got to work. It's way through the, you know, it's gonna have to wake up, works way through the system, and everybody's got to figure out, you know, where the value is for both. And I think at the end of the day, well, it helps you realize it is valuable to, you know, have a pool process by which the Correspondence Association picks who's in the pool instead of them picking who's in the pool. But, you know learn.
Alan Fleischmann
Give them time, or they won't learn. And it'll, and it'll go on. Yeah, exactly, you know. I don't know, awkward place for AP to be.
Robert Allbritton
It's a very awkward place for AP to be. And they're doing what they have to do, you know. And, okay, fine, you know –
Alan Fleischmann
And what about the Jeff Bezos, yeah.
Robert Allbritton
So I, look, he's found his voice, right? You know, like the guy owns the paper, he can do what he wants, you know, it I, you know, I think Marty Baron coming out saying he's wrecking the place by doing this is, you know, pretty telling. It kind of goes back though earlier to when, you know when they said, like, you know they had the endorsement of Kamala ready to go, and Jeff sort of pulled a pulled plug and said, no, we're not endorsing anyone. And immediately proceed to lose, you know, whatever it was, a quarter million subscribers. That, in itself, was more telling to me about what's going on in journalism than anything else. Anything else that you have big legacy publications that are increasingly dependent on consumer subscriptions, that are are slowly being painted into a corner where they must reflect the world view of their consumer subscribers in order to preserve their revenue and their existence.
I think the journalistic side of me does not like this at all. It is really just the product of the speed of change and the speed of society that we live in today, and the fact that somebody can subscribe or unsubscribe by just clicking a button. It used to be a lot harder. It used to go in bigger cycles. It used to be, you subscribe to the print paper and you signed up for, you know, a year or something like that. So you're not just going to dump your subscription based off one thing that happens. But now people do, you know, or they sign up based off that. You know. It was also very telling to me how many people were subscribers to various publications as a form of political protest, you know. And quite frankly, New York Times pitched themselves that way in advertising, you know, indirectly, you know, we're the defenders of truth and liberty at the time. You know, you know, Democracy Dies in Darkness. You know, send in your money or your, you know, or your help aiding in the demise of democracy. Like, okay? And I'm not so sure I get it, you know.
And look, the idea that you can have an advertising supported media die when Google and Amazon and Facebook came to represent, you know, 90% of all advertising dollars. You know, beyond that, you're just a rounding error to everyone. Can you develop a little business based off that? Sure, you can. Can you develop a big one? No, and I think you've had seen a lot of individual reporters go out and form their own effective publications, you know, be it a paid newsletter or something like that, where they deliver very specific information to a very targeted audience, where that information is almost existential for people doing their jobs. Like, man, that's a great business model, you know. And I think you can make pretty good money doing that. I that a marketable business that you can sell to somebody else? I don't know, you know, that's, that's another question entirely, you know, but, but it is a way to keep journalism going, you know, more than anything else, which we need, and you need desperately.
Alan Fleischmann
We need desperately and, you know, and that's another part way to get into is that, you know, you obviously spent a lot of your career focused on keeping journalism alive, keeping this part tell us a little bit. I know we're gonna run out of time. Part two, Robert, I guess. I've had several folks come back for a part two, if you're willing. This is a big topic, and I have you share your wisdom about leadership, and share your wisdom. You've got some great, incredible insights about how you build companies. How do you be an entrepreneur, how do you build things, which I'd love to share with this incredible audience, but also you're, you know, we're fighting for a truth out there in the world, and not easy, and everyone's got a different truth. But tell us about your newest company real fast.
Robert Allbritton
There. Okay, so this was coming out of Politico, and you wisely hit on something that not a lot of people realized. My entire life, I've always had another job that I was already doing I could go to. So I never got to the point where I just didn't have anything to do, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. And it was like, oh, geez, now, what am I going to do? And so this was really came out of a fairly academic exercise of, okay, what are you good at? What are you not good at? What did you like? What do you not like? You know, where can you contribute? Where do you not want to contribute? And, you know, like, we made good money in media, it may be time to split the money from the mission.
You know, I really, I have a deep respect for curious minds, and I have a deep respect and admiration for folks who are willing to be active journalist. It is not, you know, for most people, it is not a path to riches, but it is a path to having a good, impactful, meaningful life. And one thing we're pretty good at, at Politico was we were pretty good at spotting young talent because we had to. And we realized that, like it, usually they'd stay people. We'd have a lot of people stay with us for two or three years. They get a lot of experience. They move on to a bigger publication. The list was endless of folks. I couldn't crack a major paper or flip on a major newscast without seeing some Politico alumni appearing. I said, you know, we're good at this. Why don't we do that? Let's synthetically create what has gone away. And what has gone away is a lot of big city newsrooms where a lot of folks got their experience, they cut their job, you know, being a reporter, being an editor.
There are things you can do. There's a one year master's program for it. I think it's wonderful training. I'm not so sure. It gives you all the experience that you need. I think a fellowship where it really is a bit of an apprenticeship, where you actually learn from somebody else, everybody that was really good, they learned from some master as to how to practice the craft.
And so that we've done, we created a fellowship program. We bring in 10 people a year. That's it. This year, we have over 660 applications for 10 slots. I mean, it's insane last year. You know, the quality, people were nuts. One of the fellows we had turned down a Fulbright to come do this program with us. So we, you know, there's a lot of responsibility on our shoulders to do good things with these folks. And they are doing amazing work. They are breaking news. It is tons. Sometimes it's hard to tell the pros from the students, you know, and that's the whole goal. They will come out of this program, fully sourced with tons of clips in ways that other places just don't produce these kinds of folks. And, you know, we said, look, 10 people a year, we can go to bat and call our friends and say, I can't tell you why, you just need to hire this person. They're damn good, you know. And and that's what's happening for us now. We're in that we're in that process right now.
Alan Fleischmann
This is through the institute, or this is –
Robert Allbritton
So this is the institute. So NOTUS is the, what I call the, I learned this from Elena and dating her during that residency period, what I call it a teaching hospital, because I think you need that. So it's a teaching newsroom. It's a real newsroom. You know, we have real reporters who cover real stories, but at the same time, they also have fellows that they're working with closely and showing them the ropes and showing them tricks, and showing them this and showing them that. And, you know, and it's, I think, for the reporters, the full time reporters that work there, it's great. You had a couple fellows that come around and help, you know, with your work, I think for the fellows, they learn a ton. You know, it's a lovely win-win kind of proposition. Get some attention and break in some real news. And, you know, I think we're just kind of at the beginning of that process, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
So your idea is really, how do you create, you know, mentor mentees. You create opportunities, experience, but you're also going to be news. You're going to be making news, creating news, career.
Robert Allbritton
Yes, yes. You know, it's a service for the, it's a service for fellows. It's also, it's a service. Hopefully we'll, we'll have some graduates who can go on to big publications and be effective. And the program is really developed to be very, very non partisan. We actually intentionally selected people from the left and the right to teach. We teach a bit the way you would teach forensics and debate, which is, you know, don't come in with a theory of the case in the beginning. You know, listen and learn first. Wes Lowry is teaching for us. Who's, you know, a little more on the liberal side. Tim Alberta from the Atlantic is teaching for us, who's a little more on the conservative side.
And quite frankly, the makeup of our fellows is is shocking. We had a break the ice meeting, and there was one person who said, you know, this isn't about race or gender diversity. This is about diversity of thought. I said, yeah, that's exactly right, you know. And we've got everything from a white woman who worked in a Black newspaper to a white man who is a son of a Baptist preacher and went to a Bible college to another guy who was a West Point graduate and a gunnery captain and decided he wanted to go into journalism, to you name it, we got it. I mean, it's really ridiculous. And they do feed off one another.
Alan Fleischmann
This is where it gets spreading out
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, yeah. You know, recently had an announcement. Google is graciously contributing half million bucks. We are now delivering congressional coverage back to other not for profit publications in Mississippi and Oklahoma and California and Texas, you know, so that we can be their Washington bureau. In effect, it's a way that we can help local news too, because so many local papers, you know, used to have a Washington correspondent where they were, they get coverage of their delegations and that's gone. And, you know, there's a lot of news that comes out of some delegations that just isn't covered because they're, you know, they don't have somebody who's, you know, chairman of the Commerce Committee, you know, from there, or something like that. But guess what, they vote and they do introduce bills, and they are important voices.
Alan Fleischmann
And things bubble up, and it just kind of to replace the role that local news was playing for a long time, too.
Robert Allbritton
Totally, yeah, totally, you know, we just do it from D.C., you know, because it's like, A, we're here. B, I think that Congress is a great place to get training for folks. It is still a very open institution, it is still possible to get access to people who have serious power and are serious players. It is a very serious subject. I mean, and yet it's a place where these guys, you know, can really cut their teeth. And by the way, most of these guys that come in, they're not college kids. They're folks who have already worked in a paper for a few years, or, you know, have a master's in journalism already, you know, they're, they've got some experience. They've got some clips. It really is a fellowship program. It's a polishing kind of program.
Alan Fleischmann
I love that. I love that. And, and how much of your time are you spending on this?
Robert Allbritton
Oh half maybe, you know, I spent any more, I'd probably be hovering over it too damn much, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
But it’s a big passion of yours right now, yeah.
Robert Allbritton
And it's fun, right? You know? I mean, it is a golden age for reporters, you know, not all money. I know about everybody else, but it's, you know, and, man, I mean, with everything that's going on right now in D.C., in the world. I mean, it is a, if you have a curious mind and you like reporting, and you're trying to figure out which way is up, and trying to help guide people, man, this is the time for you. You know, there is, there has never been a better time to be in those kind of slots.
Alan Fleischmann
And what is your dream for that? I mean, it sounds like the Institute, and this are kind of, it's like a nonprofit, working with a for profit in some ways, right?
Robert Allbritton
Yeah. But, you know, at the end of the day, it's like, you know, it's pretty close to being sustainable. Now, I'd like to be fully sustainable, you know. You know, it's not that old, you know. So that's dream number one, something that's like, okay, I know this is going to go on and continue to contribute in a meaningful way, something that evolves on its own right. Because I don't think anything static, I think something is nimble, I'd like to keep it smaller rather than larger. I think there's something about smaller organizations that it's just more fun.
Alan Fleischmann
Quite frankly, I think entrepreneurial and scrappy.
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, and I think that's the difference between commercial and not for profit. Like, you know, Harvard could be five times the size tomorrow if they wanted to be. They got the money, you know. But that's not, that's not their goal. Their goal is to be the best, not the biggest. And so that's, that's a bit of our goal to like, we really want to be the best at what we do. And that means every single person that works here, every single person that touches there, is important,
Alan Fleischmann
Is the best, yeah, either is the best or will become the best.
Robert Allbritton
Yeah, hopefully, hopefully, you know.
Alan Fleischmann
So we have to do, this is part one of two. This is we've done this a few times where I know you and I can talk for another hour about some really thoughtful, really important things, and get into your leadership lessons, getting into what you think would be important, but also really get into what this means in the world we live in, how to make democracy work. I think would be pretty powerful.
Robert Allbritton
I think it would be a blast. So let's do it. You name it, you name the time, I'm up for it.
Alan Fleischmann
Okay, cool. This is the end of part one. You've been listening to Leadership Matters on SiriusXM and leadershipmattersshow.com. I'm your host, Alan Fleischman. The first part of a two part interview with Robert Allbritton, the founder of Politico, Allbritton Journalism Institute and NOTUS, among other things. And we're going to get back on with him again soon to do another hour. It's been a real pleasure, Robert. You have so much to share, because I know it. I can't wait to share more with you.
Robert Allbritton
Alan, you are kind and generous beyond belief, and I will aspire to to live up to your description.