My brief piece a month ago asking whether Politico was really “new media” focused more on editorial output than biz-side developments, but it did note an April report by Peter Osnos (CJR’s vice chairman) that Politico derives about 60 percent of its revenue from print advertising. Today at paidContent, Rafat Ali brings the data, and that figure turns out to be on the money: Ali’s chart, based on SEC filings, shows for that for FY09 print accounted for 60.5 percent of Politico’s operating revenues.
The chart also shows that Politico’s revenue streams have been moving toward parity—print accounted for almost 90 percent of income in 2007, the publication’s first year, and nearly 70 percent in 2008. That trend may well continue: over the past year, the absolute growth in online revenues actually slightly exceeded the increase in print revenues. (In percentage terms, online revenue has grown far more quickly, owing to its smaller base.)
Of course, those online revenues stem from a far larger Web readership—something like seven million unique users a month, compared to the 32,000-copy print run, according to The Guardian. And the take-away remains that, at least for now, Politico gets most of its money from print. Still, these figures suggest that, “new media” model or no, Politico is making some headway in generating money from the Web.
Greg Marx is an associate editor at CJR. Follow him on Twitter @gregamarx.