I haven’t delved into The New Republic’s Politico article yet, but TNR’s blog The Plank has a delicious memo full of advice on Politico’s style. The Politico folks may be tools, but they were the biggest media story of the election season until Nate Silver came along, so their method is worth studying and maybe repurposing.

The questions every Politico reporter is supposed to be considering about their story:

a) Would this be a “most e-mailed” story?

b) Would I read this story if I hadn’t written it?

c) Would my mother read this story?

d) Will a blogger be inspired to post on this story?

e) Might an investor buy or sell a stock based on this story?

f) Would a specialist learn something from this story?

g) Will my competitors be forced to follow this?

There are two other parts of the full memo (PDF) that are worth considering. First is the Politico’s early publishing time–5 AM–intended to get on the morning meeting agenda of DC power brokers. Interesting because conventional wisdom is that ideal time to publish is around lunch or right after work to maximize traffic.

Second is the typical, incredibly important to get a story out as soon as possible: “Speed kills. Velocity - SPEED + POWER”. If there’s anything I learned in the shit, it’s that whatever you don’t cover the competition will do the day after you put it off. That’s a lesson I learned from Lee Abrams, but that’s a story for Friday.

I’m a sucker for internal media memos, as the best ones give away the recipes after you’ve eaten the cake. My favorite is this Gawker memo and anything by Lee. If you have any others, for my sake, leave them in the comments.

Via Romenesko

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