Some background on RealClearPolitics.com:
Politicking pays off
September 18, 2006
BY HOWARD WOLINSKY Business Reporter
Just in time for the midterm elections, RealClearPolitics.com, the popular Chicago-based political Web site, has signed agreements that will feature its material at FoxNews.com and Time.com, two of the country's more influential political brands.
Time and RealClearPolitics today will announce a partnership through which RealClearPolitics will re-direct its visitors to a co-branded Time.com page with content from RCP Blog. The blog features political commentary and analysis from RealClearPolitics' editors and co-founders, John McIntyre and Tom Bevan, as well as other contributors. RCP also will provide Time.com with RealClearPolitics Poll Averages on the president, Congress and mood of the nation.
On Thursday, RCP announced another partnership with FoxNews.com that re-directs online visitors to a co-branded FoxNews.com page. The page carries RealClearPolitics' BuzzTracker, which measures on an hourly basis what are the most popular topics being discussed at 5,000 political Web sites.
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WHO VISITS REALCLEARPOLITICS.COM?
According to the Chicago political Web site, RealClearPolitics readers are well-educated, well-off and male.
These online readers may be politically engaged -- 35 percent of them wrote letters to the editor in the past year -- but RCP isn't disclosing much about its audience's politics. Alan Warms, RCP's publisher, said, "They are a bit more conservative, but the site is super-balanced [politically]."
Here's what RCP tells its advertisers about its visitors:
85 percent are men with an average age of 44.
More than 6 percent have doctoral degrees, more than 8 percent have MBAs, and more than 14 percent have law or medical degrees.
10 percent earn more than $250,000 a year, 50 percent earn over $100,000, and more than 1 in 5 are worth over $1 million.
81 percent listed the Internet as their major source of political news.
--Howard Wolinsky
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Alan Warms, 40, publisher of RealClearPolitics for the past year through his company Participate Media, said the moves by Fox and Time represent a shift in mainstream media to tap into "the diversity of opinion and analysis available in the blogosphere," the growing world of online blogs.
Bert Solivan, Fox News senior vice president of digital media, said, "In launching the Fox News and RealClearPolitics Opinion BuzzTracker site, we are now giving more online users easier and instant access to political stories and topics that are top of mind throughout the world."
The Time and Fox deals follow partnerships made earlier this year by RealClearPolitics with Yahoo News, Forbes and OpinionJournal from the Wall Street Journal.
Warms would not disclose revenue, but said RealClearPolitics has been growing rapidly. In October 2005, RCP had 450,000 unique visitors and 6 million page views. This August, the site had grown to 640,00 visitors and 10 million page views. He attributed the growth to the quality of the site and the partnerships attracting more visitors.
McIntyre, 37, of Evanston, and Bevan, 36, of Lincoln Park, founded RealClearPolitics in 2000 as an online water cooler of opinion, news, polls and political analysis aimed at political junkies, policy wonks and politicians of all stripes. The site has become the daily stop for many political fans, including the nation's top political columnists.
Bevan, a history major, and McIntyre, an economics major, first met as undergrads at Princeton University in the early 1990s, but didn't really get to know each other until the late 1990s when they became roommates in Chicago. McIntyre was a trader at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, while Bevan was a strategist with ad agency Leo Burnett.
At the time, the Internet was emerging as a wild new medium, which many people used to sound off on politics.
Bevan and McIntyre developed a Web site that served as a filter of the "ocean of content on politics online," said Bevan, who writes a monthly column on politics for the Sun-Times.
On their front page, Bevan and McIntyre provide links to provocative commentary from a wide variety of sources while adding their own analysis. In a recent edition, for example, RealClearPolitics carried a rich stew of op-eds from the Sun-Times' conservative columnist Robert Novak and liberal New York Sen. Hillary Clinton.
Though RealClearPolitics often carries opinion from the Washington Post, Washington Monthly and New York Times, it does not have an inside-the-Beltway feel. It runs commentary from geographically diverse sources, such as the Seattle Post Intelligencer, the Providence (R.I.) Journal and the Ottawa (Ont.) Citizen.
RealClearPolitics made its mark with its averaging poll that pulls together polls from competing organizations and adds its own perspective, looking at such topics as the president's popularity. In 2004, using its pioneering techniques, RCP correctly called the election of George W. Bush.
Warms said the 2004 election "validated the election approach at RCP. They did the best analysis and called the election correctly. It was a huge milestone."
Warms was the founder of Participate.com, which developed online communities for business, one of Chicago's first dot-coms. He sold the company in November 2004, and sought new ventures.
He was a huge fan of RealClearPolitics, but didn't know the site was based in Chicago until he read a Bevan column about a July 4th parade in Evanston in 2005. The self-described "political junkie" zipped off an e-mail and met Bevan and McIntyre, who were looking for funding and help in building up the business side of their site.
Warms formed a group of investors and raised just under $1 million and took RCP under Participate Media's wing.
He expects big growth with RCP's new partners and the upcoming 2008 presidential election.
"2006 is the year when mainstream media have realized their audiences are demanding access to all the content new media can provide," he said. "RealClearPolitics listens to thousands and serves as an intelligent filter of thousands of passionate voices on the right and left. With these new tools, the electorate for the 2008 presidential election will be the most informed ever."
hwolinsky@suntimes.com
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