“The Star” is born.
NOTUS, a Washington political news website with ambitious plans to fill a void it says was left by deep cuts at The Washington Post, will be renamed The Star and relaunch in the first week of June, the editor in chief, Tim Grieve, said on Thursday.
NOTUS started in 2023 as a publication tied to the Allbritton Journalism Institute, a nonprofit that trains young political journalists. Its name stands for News of the United States, a play on the nickname for the President of the United States. It was created with a $20 million grant from Robert Allbritton, the billionaire co-founder of Politico.
In February, The Post abruptly laid off more than 300 of its 800 journalists, sharply reduced its metro section and shut down its local sports coverage. After those moves, the leaders of NOTUS decided to accelerate their expansion plans in Washington.
The publication will soon cover local news and local sports, Mr. Grieve said. The publication will also increase its coverage of Congress and the White House. The newsroom, which had about 45 people at the beginning of the year, will probably more than double to 95 journalists by the end of the year.
There was “a need for a publication that really focused on both political Washington and ‘normal’ Washington, as The Post retreats on that front,” Mr. Grieve said.
The changes at The Post, which were aimed at stemming annual losses of more than $100 million, have upended the Washington media ecosystem. Some outlets, including The Atlantic and The New York Times, moved quickly to hire Post reporters, and publications including The Baltimore Banner and City Cast DC have announced intentions to expand their news coverage in The Post’s wake.
A spokeswoman for The Post said in a statement that it remained committed to producing essential journalism, including local and sports coverage.
Part of the new NOTUS plan was to rename the outlet to appeal to a broader audience. They settled on The Star for its simplicity. Mr. Allbritton’s father, Joe Allbritton, also once owned The Washington Star, a daily afternoon newspaper that stopped publishing in 1981.
NOTUS has recently hired numerous prominent Post reporters, including Jeff Stein, as chief economics correspondent; Dana Milbank, as a columnist; Paul Kane and Kadia Goba, as congressional reporters; and Sam Fortier, as a sports reporter. Other new hires have come from other Washington outlets, such as The Hill, Politico and Axios. Mr. Grieve said his publication was continuing to hire.
Mr. Allbritton will put in around $30 million to get The Star to a self-sustaining level, according to a person familiar with the plans. Mr. Grieve would not confirm the financial details, but said The Star’s annual budget would be in the “tens of millions of dollars, not hundreds of millions.”
It will rely on public affairs advertising, as many Washington publications do, and will introduce subscriptions later this year.
“There will be a period of time where a portion of our annual funding will have to come from Robert, and he’s super committed to doing that,” Mr. Grieve said.
Katie Robertson covers the media industry for The Times. Email: [email protected]
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