By Alexandra Bruell | Photography by Greg Kahn for WSJ

Robert Allbritton was on a ski lift in Aspen, Colo., when he learned that many of the Washington Post's top journalists were considering leaving the storied but troubled outlet.

"Take em all," the billionaire co-founder of Politico texted to the editor of his news startup, Notus.

Allbritton canceled a Caribbean cruise, flew his jet home to Washington, D.C., and started planning. He and his editor, Tim Grieve, joined a video call with about 15 disgruntled Post reporters in mid-February, trading thoughts about filling a void after the Post gutted its local-news and sports desks.

His plan: Expand his two-year-old publication, Notus, by hiring big-name reporters to cover topics relevant to Washington's powerful residents. (Notus stands for News of the United States.)

He is renaming the publication the Star, a nod to the Washington Star, a former D.C. paper that his father once owned. The Washington Star trademark is currently owned by New York Sun Publisher Dovid Efune; Allbritton said he considered pursuing the name but ultimately went with the Star to reflect broader coverage.

"We are a factory town. Detroit makes cars, we make government," Allbritton said in a recent interview at a cafe near his Georgetown home, which was being spruced up for a brunch he co-hosts with Politico during the White House Correspondents' Association dinner weekend. "There needs to be a paper around here that is focused on what we do."

Plenty of billionaires have set out, and struggled, to revive America's news institutions, including Jeff Bezos at the Washington Post and Patrick Soon-Shiong at the Los Angeles Times. While Washington is a crowded media market, with titles including the Post, Politico, Punchbowl and Roll Call, Allbritton is unfazed by the challenge.

"I don't see failure as even a decent probability," said Allbritton, who helped found Politico in 2007 and sold it to Axel Springer in 2021.

Allbritton, 57, launched Notus in 2024, months after starting the nonprofit Allbritton Journalism Institute as a training ground for reporters. In recent weeks, he and Grieve have gone on a hiring spree for more-established journalists from the Post, Politico and other outlets. Allbritton expects to more than double his newsroom to about 100 journalists by year-end and introduce a paywall soon.

He plans to invest about $10 million into the Star this year. With revenue from subscriptions and advertisements, he expects the operation to break even by 2029.

'The ultimate optimist'

Robert Allbritton was born in Houston in 1969. His family, which made its money in real estate and banking, moved to D.C. when he was in first grade so his father, Joe Allbritton, could run the Star. Joe soon sold the paper, and a few years later purchased a large stake in Washington-based Riggs Bank. The family matriarch, Barby, remains a D.C. society fixture.

A self-described nerd as a child, Allbritton spent much of his youth building and communicating through early computer-based systems that hooked up to phone lines and allowed users to send one another messages.

Obsessed with figuring out how things worked, he was an inveterate tinkerer. At 16, he rebuilt a 1970 Pontiac GTO convertible, and after college he learned to fly a plane.

Friends noted his persistence. "He's the ultimate optimist," said Cathy Merrill, chief executive of Washingtonian Media and a childhood friend. She taught him how to water-ski at her home in Annapolis, Md., when they were teenagers. He tried at least 25 times before he got up, she recalled.

Allbritton attended Wesleyan University, where he met his wife, Elena, with whom he has three children. After graduating in 1992, he worked at his father's TV station in Little Rock, Ark., and by 2001 he was running the broader TV station group, Allbritton Communications.

Allbritton took over Riggs Bank from his father in 2001, and the family sold its stake in the bank in 2005 after it faced scrutiny over money-laundering allegations. Neither Robert nor Joe Allbritton was charged with wrongdoing, although the bank paid fines and penalties.

"His father considered himself a banker and investor. Robert considered himself a media guy," said Tige Savage, co-founder at the venture-capital firm Revolution Ventures and a childhood friend.

Media matters

Allbritton launched Politico in 2007 with the Washington Post journalists Jim VandeHei and John Harris, along with Fred Ryan, then president of Allbritton Communications.

While the Washington media market was already crowded, Merrill said competitors underestimated Allbritton. The Beltway publication put itself on the map with a steady stream of scoops during the 2008 presidential race and built a lucrative subscription business with niche policy coverage.

"I loved the beginning of Politico because it was smaller; you knew everybody," said Allbritton. By the end, he said, the work was "mentally exhausting" and he didn't want to focus so much on profit.

Allbritton tried to launch a hyperlocal news site, called TBD, in 2010. But it relied too heavily on contributor content and ad revenue from traditional TV ad buyers uninterested in new media, he said. It folded after about two years.

He sold his TV station group to Sinclair in 2014 for around $1 billion, including about $500 million in debt. Allbritton resisted a 2015 push from VandeHei to sell a Politico stake to Axel Springer, its European partner, in a deal that would value the publication at around $250 million. VandeHei and others left to start the digital-news outlet Axios, and in 2021 Allbritton sold Politico to Axel Springer for about $1 billion.

With the Star, Allbritton said, a sale isn't the endgame. "I don't need the damn money," he said. "This time, let's do it for the purity of the mission."

Write to Alexandra Bruell at alexandra.bruell@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 23, 2026 10:20 ET (14:20 GMT)

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