Washington Post revamps online political coverage

The Washington Post, long the dominant newspaper in the US capital, is revamping its political coverage online as it seeks to fend off digital era competition.

The Post unveiled a new look for its online coverage of political news on Wednesday, rolling stories by its reporters, columnists, video, photos and other features into a single homepage called PostPolitics.com.

"We know that a large portion of our audience comes to us to read about politics or policy - what's happening in Washington," said Post executive editor Marcus Brauchli.

"The idea behind PostPolitics is that a reader who follows politics should be able to know everything that might matter to him or her and to be able to see all the relative content in one place," Mr Brauchli told AFP.

"It's meant to address both people who are serious political junkies or who have an interest in politics and the process in Washington," he said.

One of the goals is to let readers seeking political news cut through the clutter of a newspaper homepage.

"Like a lot of websites, our main website has just an incredible swathe of great information but it's not easy to find what your interest is if your interest is more specialized," Mr Brauchli said.

"We had a politics section, but a lot of the content was all over the place. We wanted to bring it together in a really easy to use, easy to navigate, smart format," he said.

The Washington Post's repackaging of its online political coverage comes amid challenges from relative newcomers such as Politico.com, The Huffington Post and other sites.

Mr Brauchli, who joined the Post in September 2008 after serving as managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, said PostPolitics will feature "a lot more aggregation" and even links to the competition.

"We're doing some things that are a lot more adventurous and aggressive," he said. "We're not going to hesitate to promote something that comes from another organization."

Among the links featured on PostPolitics on Wednesday were stories from Politico, which was launched three years ago by a team that included former Post staffers.

"People shouldn't have to go basically on a hunt and peck around the Internet to try and find information that they care about," Mr Brauchli said.

"If there's a development that somebody else is reporting, if somebody else has a terrific scoop or feature, I think we should let our readers know about it," he said. "If the competition has a story that we think our readers might care about, we'll link to it."

As for the Post, "we're looking to write stories that are deeper, smarter and more forward-looking," the Post executive editor said. "We're looking to add context and analysis."

The new Post politics section also features the ability to share stories through social networks such as Twitter and Facebook.

"We recognise that one of the ways, one of the critical ways in which people both consume and share content is through social media," Mr Brauchli said. "We want to make it as easy for our users as possible to tell their friends about what they're seeing on PostPolitics."

The Post said the new site will also feature live video chats, a network of political bloggers and an interactive election map showing congressional and gubernatorial races in the upcoming mid-term elections.

PostPolitics also hosts a "POTUS Tracker" which follows President Barack Obama's every move with regular updates.