The motto around the Politico newsroom is to “win the morning, win the afternoon”—by which editors mean that Politico’s stories need to be the most talked-about and cited in that day’s news cycle. One measure of winning is getting stories linked on sites like Drudge Report and The Huffington Post, which leads to appearances on the cable shows. Politico employs three publicists who routinely send out links to bloggers and producers. “We’re pretty damn methodical about making sure anybody who cares about a story we wrote knows about it,” VandeHei says. Allbritton tells me that, for too long, journalists have been overly squeamish at the idea of promoting their own work. “I think a lot journalists say there’s something ethically and morally wrong about [p.r.],” he says. “I’m like, wait a minute, if you wrote a great story that’s factually accurate, why would you be ashamed of that?