onepolitics has competition. The Dizzy Thinks blog revealed at the end of January that Stefan Shakespeare (who previously brought you 18 Doughty Street and YouGov) is set to launch PoliticsHome.com, promising to be the 'definitive portal to the ongoing political debate, edited by some of the UK's leading political journalists and pollsters'. Then Guido published a screenshot a couple of weeks back (although his footnote that PoliticsHome 'is not going to be the final name' looks a bit shaky given the company's later use of the URL).
First there was a job advert for 'well paid part-time shifts' on the Work for an MP site, withdrawn early due to a high number of applicants. Now there's an ad on the Guardian site, offering a salary of around £40k for a 'Daily Editor to manage the newsroom and head up its website coverage'. But crucially, the ad notes, the site 'does not produce its own content.'
Promises of a February launch look a bit optimistic now. But there's clearly a lot of money going into this - and it had better be good, very good. Because in a matter of a couple of days, and using fairly straightforward technology, I produced a website which (if you don't mind me saying) does a more than reasonable job of providing a 'portal to the ongoing political debate'. Granted, onepolitics makes no attempt to offer a qualitative commentary on individual posts... but it could, if anyone fancies helping me construct a business model?
What's quite nice is that this post jumped straight to the #1 spot on Google for 'politicshome', within a couple of hours of posting...