Media Masters - Jim VandeHei

Media Masters

Jim VandeHei is a media entrepreneur and founder/CEO of Axios. With a career spent at The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post, he co-founded Politico in 2006, and left a decade later due to issues with the co-founder. Jim began Axios in 2016, which came to public prominence after Jonathan Swan’s iconic interview with President Trump, and now boasts over 4 million monthly visitors, 2 million newsletter subscriptions. In this in-depth interview, Jim discusses Axios’ unique proposition as “The Economist mated with Twitter,” and how their “smart brevity” approach makes “high-end info consumption more efficient, enjoyable and essential” with ambitious plans to expand local coverage to 50 cities; shares the whole story of Politico’s journey from start to finish - including a candid, warts-and-all discussion of the execution of their “all-politics, all the time” mission; and gives a Washington insider’s analysis on Biden’s first six months - and Trump’s likely next move.