The National Journal‘s website, once read only by D.C. pols willing to pony up the steep subscription fee, now has a set date when it will ease its paywall and present content to a larger readership.
After a summer of big name hires and a reinvigorated newsroom, the politics publication — which operates under the control of Atlantic Media owner David Bradley, in the same Washington offices as The Atlantic — will launch its online redesign on Oct. 25. While breaking news and analysis will be available to the public online, some of the new content will be blocked to all but National Journal subscribers, who pay $2,000 a year for the print and online editions. The launch date was announced in press release sent out earlier today.
The spree of journalists Fournier and his team have lured to D.C. has been quite impressive and well-reported. In September, David Carr spoke to Bradley for The New York Times about the motivation behind the refocusing of the National Journal. “About 13 months ago, I was flying back from France and began thinking about how effortlessly Politico had wedged itself into the ad market against a very strong group of incumbents,” Bradley told The Times. “And I thought that required a radical rethinking of what we had been doing.”
NationalJournal.com, which was previously publishing about five stories a day, will be aiming for around 100 a day after the relaunch.
nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234
Updated: The original headline to this post suggested that the National Journal no longer has a paywall that restricts certain content to subscribers only. The National Journal will still block some content from those not paying a subscriber’s fee, and this side of the National Journal website is being enhanced along with the free side.
