Tightening on the Beltway

Two years ago, while other markets were slashing staffs and closing papers, Washington, D.C., media players were swelling their ranks. Bloomberg LP hired aggressively to build its expensive subscription news and data service, Bloomberg Government, and paid $990 million for BNA, a legal, tax, regulatory and environmental news and info service to bolster it. Last year, to help promote BGov, it published oversized glossy dailies to distribute at the political conventions. At the same time, Politico was building a paid service of its own, and National Journal was adding staff.