Robert Allbritton: Georgetown’s Un-Bezos
By • September 18, 2026 One Comment 420
There is something disarming when a local billionaire’s response to a question about whether he does his own grocery shopping is a concern shared by everyone who shops at the Wisconsin Avenue Trader Joe’s: “I feel like I’m going to kill my car getting in and out.”
Grabbing groceries or meeting a reporter for breakfast without cameras or an entourage is clearly important to Robert Allbritton. His desire for anonymity dates to watching strangers recognize his father, founder of the Allbritton empire.
“I saw people recognize my dad on the street,” he recalls, “and I would ask, Do you know him? And he would say no. That just seemed so strange to me. I didn’t like it.”
Welcome to Georgetown’s un-Bezos. He may be the District’s other media mogul and reside in the financial stratosphere, but that is where similarities stop. Washington, D.C., is Allbritton’s home, not just a place he has a home. Paparazzi aren’t shadowing him. In fact, he almost turned down an invitation for a photo shoot to accompany this article.
Allbritton answers texts and arranges his own schedule. He doesn’t flaunt his wealth with well-publicized mega-yachts. His first and only marriage is to a doctor who has her own career. Together, they are raising three children at home (one is off to university).
Nonetheless, the man is one of this century’s great journalistic entrepreneurs. Allbritton obviously loves building journalism companies — because, he says, “I like newsrooms, they are filled with curious people.”
Robert Allbritton in the Washington Sun newsroom. Photo by Mira Adwell.
His father laid the foundation, owning a newspaper and television stations, as well as Riggs Bank. But Allbritton took his father’s empire and raised the stakes, bringing us Politico — changing the face of political reporting in doing so — and then taking it a step further, modernizing and increasing the economic success of the traditional industry newsletter model with Politico Pro (“making it something readable,” he says).
Next, he sold them for a billion dollars. He sold the family collection of television stations, including WJLA, for half a billion.
Three years ago, Allbritton started again, because running the family’s investment portfolio wasn’t fulfilling. He dismisses his inability to stay away from journalism, claiming he’s not able to help himself. “I call myself the recidivist publisher,” he says, adding less coyly: “People like to build things or people don’t. People like taking risks or they don’t.”
Allbritton clearly does.
This time it is a twist on the newsroom, a journalism education endeavor he personally funded with $20 million because he believes education will be his lasting impact. One of the few overt expressions of pride comes when Allbritton notes how many of his early career journalists at Politico went on to become journalistic stars.
So, he doubled down. The Allbritton Journalism Institute gives starting journalists two years of paid, old-fashioned political reporting apprenticeships (“You can’t learn this stuff in a classroom”). Young reporters, who work with hardened professionals, have already broken a handful of big stories. Their work has appeared in the online political publication NOTUS (News Of The United States — a take on SCOTUS, Supreme Court Of The United States, and POTUS, President Of The United States).
NOTUS has now relaunched as a full-fledged local journalism enterprise: The Washington Sun. (“The Washington Star” was dropped following a lawsuit over the name that Allbritton didn’t think worth fighting.)
This new enterprise comes at a fascinating time in media, when private owners like Bezos and Ellison (of Paramount infamy) are being pilloried, legacy brands like CBS News are having very public identity crises, a passel of hyperfocused publications have appeared in the political journalism world that Allbritton reshaped and many of the small, nonprofit local publications that popped up in a post-Covid tsunami face financial extinction.
But Allbritton harrumphs at the idea that American journalism is in crisis. Rather, he is bullish. And he sees opportunity in D.C.
(It would be foolish to bet against him. Allbritton has repeatedly demonstrated a gift for seeing a journalism wave coming and starting to paddle so he can ride it before it breaks.)
In this case, it is not only due to what he sees across town: the Washington Post receding from local coverage. It is also because Allbritton has identified two trends he believes can be the foundation of a new kind of financially sustainable local news organization.
The first is that he sees an opportunity to build on the Politico advertising model — funded by corporations willing to spend lavishly to get their interests under the noses of D.C.’s players — by adding a nonpolitical, local content dimension.
“Those chiefs of staff are just people. They’re called human beings, and they actually live here. And they’re interested in what goes on in their backyard, local news. Is it going to dump snow? How are the Nats doing? I believe nobody is serving that and it makes for a stronger news bundle.”
Allbritton is confident that adding local reporting will differentiate his project from those other relatively new outlets with a hyperfocus on politics, like Punchbowl. The question is, What does Allbritton mean by “local coverage?” He says he’s not looking to cover every town hall meeting, but rather the big communal issues that the town hall is meeting about.
The second trend, almost heretical in the world of journalism, is the idea that the “Chinese wall” that traditionally divided newsroom editorial and sales has been crossed. “Smart revenue guys today realize they need to sell quality. It is not just the old-fashioned quick-sell-and-get-out as in the past. And now the journalists are too often trending towards the quick sale — the clickbait — because of the focus on numbers.”
In Allbritton’s new world, the journalists and the sales teams collaborate, creating quality journalism for which people will pay. In short: RIP, the first law of traditional journalism.
Put together, Allbritton believes these trends mean there is a sustainable D.C.-based journalism model to be had of marrying quality political and community reporting, done on a realistic scale (implying, but not directly criticizing, the Post as having gotten too big).
But Allbritton is clear: The Washington Sun is not a charity project. It has to make money, with all profits reinvested in the Allbritton Journalism Institute.
The key, he says, is quality. So, he raided the Post and just about everyone else to create an A-team of reporters. He credits his editor-in-chief, Tim Grieve, with being a genius at identifying talent. He even lured the D.C. food scene-defining Tom Sietsema out of retirement to again start “eating mediocre food so you don’t have to” (as Sietsema once put it).
It’s just one more act for the proven journalism impresario.
The constant in Allbritton’s strategy and execution? The man is a true Washingtonian. Check out this lightning round: Which sports team? “Nats, of course. I am a baseball guy.” Cupcakes (the real test)? “Baked and Wired.” Could he do this anywhere else? “Absolutely not.” Chicago? “Too cold.” L.A.? “Who would want to?”
Georgetown is his home. Allbritton has lived for two decades in the Georgetown house his wife put in a bid for while he was on a business trip (“I married up”). She has hinted at downsizing when the last of their kids is out of the house, which is known for its over-the-top Halloween decorations.
“But where to? Florida? Ick! And besides, at least one of my kids will likely end up living at home.”
Spoken like a 2020s parent, who does the grocery shopping.
I want the Washington Sun!! The Post is a shell of its self.