This week, Robert Allbritton, the boyishly ebullient Washington media heir and former proprietor of Politico, revealed a plan to aggressively increase his investment in NOTUS, the fledgling political news startup that he launched two years ago from inside his 501(c)(3), the Allbritton Journalism Institute. The plan includes doubling NOTUS’s 50-person staff this year, starting with three reporters he poached this week from The Washington Post—which, as you know, has been going through some considerable shit. Taking on a floundering Post was the animating insight of Politico, of course. Now Robert is at it again.

In an interview with The Guardian, Robert said he’d been inspired to accelerate NOTUS’s growth plan because of the Post’s recent layoffs and rolling identity crisis. “Opportunity knocks, and you’re going to decide if you’re going to answer the door or not,” he said. “We don’t want to be The Washington Post, but I think there’s a place for the journalism of the Post and the mission of the Post without a lot of the legacy expenses that were necessary when [that] organization was a print-based organization.” (Robert, who has been talking to press, did not respond to my requests for interviews.)

Rumors of Robert’s new investment had been percolating for weeks on the D.C. social circuit, where better gossip can be hard to come by. Semafor’s Max Tani recently reported that Robert had applied to trademark “The Washington Sun,” which portends a merciful rebrand—NOTUS, which is pronounced “notice,” stands for “News of the United States” (sigh)—and suggested his desire to rekindle the sort of newspaper war that his father, the proprietor of The Washington Star (as well as WJLA-TV and News Channel 8) once attempted to engage in with Kay Graham.

Wishful thinking, alas, but amid the Post’s contraction and the general ennui of the D.C. news industry, the prospect of any media proprietor telegraphing ambition and doling out checks inspired considerable interest. At a recent party in Kalorama, a group of beat reporters asked one another whether anyone knew what Robert might be paying. (I’m told some reporters are fetching north of $300,000 a year.) Meanwhile, Washington’s executive establishment focused on Robert’s motivations: What was the thesis? What was the endgame? Why was he investing in another media outfit? And who would be his Jim VandeHei—the visionary and hustler who was going to operate this thing and put his family’s money to work?

Robert’s previous claim to fame is bankrolling Politico, which sold for $1 billion to Mathias Döpfner’s Axel Springer in 2021. The deal netted him a significant pile to place on top of the fortune he’d already inherited from his family. But as everyone in the Beltway knows, Politico’s success was really driven by its disruptive and visionary founders: VandeHei, John Harris, and the perpetually in motion Mike Allen. Robert’s real achievement was backstopping their vision—and continuing to fund it for 15 years, even during the fits and starts and some heavy cash burn years. Had Jim and John attempted to start their company in today’s investment landscape, it’s safe to say they would have reaped their own substantial pile. (In the end, despite the public narrative, both realized material cash proceeds from their equity in the enterprise.)

In any event, Robert was the money, not the operator. Indeed, in two instances along Politico’s journey, he caught the entrepreneurial bug and underwrote sister startups—which quickly failed. In 2010, he launched the hyperlocal news site TBD, which folded two years later. In 2020, he launched a tech-news site called Protocol, which also shuttered two years later. Inside Politico, Robert was seen as an oblivious-but-harmless Mr. Magoo type, the kind of guy who enjoyed owning a news company and the prestige it conferred but wasn’t interested in the management or production of a daily news report—or even wielding the political influence of the institution. He has a social discomfort that is Newhousian—both weird and a little off-putting, but also sometimes rather disarming and even charming. He delighted in hosting the most coveted brunch on the White House Correspondents’ Dinner circuit. He could talk at length about his multiple planes and the joys of piloting. “His one digital success was a brainchild of others and his TV success was inherited from his father,” observed one media executive, perhaps slightly unschooled in the principles of investing. “He has a knack for stumbling into both spectacular flops, like TBD, and successes, like hiring Jim and John.”

Most Georgetown insiders who know Robert believe that he has missed the relevance he enjoyed at Politico, and that he sees NOTUS, or “The Washington Sun,” as a ticket back to the dance. Some posit that he may feel like he never got enough credit for Politico’s success and still has something to prove. Given his father’s legacy, the prospect of going head to head with The Washington Post once again may simply be irresistible. Plus, he has nothing but money and time—a potent combination—on his hands.

On some level, though, Robert may have missed the point of the Post’s demise. Building a political news business is hard—even in a town with seemingly limitless budgets for influence campaigns and advocacy advertising. You can’t simply spend your way to success. Young journalists may envy the $300,000 salary, but it’s worth recalling that Jimmy Finkelstein paid even more to lure reporters to The Messenger. True success depends on the ambition and metabolism of people like Jim and John and Mike—and Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman and Ben Smith in their reportorial prime. As every executive knows, those people are very hard to come by.

More importantly, markets aren’t static: There are more competitors and less differentiated talent than ever. Jim and Mike took the formula they developed at Politico and wove it into Axios, which exited at a $525 million valuation. Jake Sherman, their disciple, started Punchbowl in the same image. Semafor, led by Ben, is playing an events-weighted version of this game, too. (Of course, Puck is also deeply engaged in this market.) Meanwhile, JMart has a Where’s Waldo sinecure at Politico, Maggie is on book leave, and Bezos effectively dismissed half his newsroom. Allbritton, the restless operator, might think it’s a great time to meet his destiny. Alas, any media investor would almost certainly disagree.

Robert may have made waves on D.C. media Twitter, if such a thing still exists, by hiring three Post reporters at once. But, at the risk of never eating lunch in that town again, these reporters probably aren’t going to usher in the dawn of Washington’s next great media company, and their moves are really only relevant to parochial Beltway denizens who fail to see that the Post’s vacuum was already filled years ago. Does the town need another media company? Obviously not. But Robert does, and bless his heart for it.