The predecessor to Political Wire was called Political Insider, a morning briefing on politics published in the run up to the 2000 presidential election.
The technology was quite different then.
At 4 a.m. my computer automatically dialed up with a modem and phone line to get on the internet and ran a custom program to download and save dozens of news stories locally.
I read these on the commuter train into New York City each morning and compiled them into the daily briefing, along with contributions from my friend and co-author, Chris Riback.
The site was published when I got into the office and could get back on the internet.
Sometime in late 2000 — probably during the infamous Florida recount — I came across new software called Greymatter.
The software ran on a server and allowed you to easily post items to a website in reverse chronological order. And you could access it from any web browser anywhere in the world.
That’s when I got the idea for Political Wire.
The new site was launched just after the 2000 election with reverse chronological posts of the most important political news updated around the clock instead of just once a day.
The site subsequently moved to Moveable Type and then to WordPress on the backend, but the idea has always been the same.
I wanted to replicate the idea of a “living column,” based broadly on the popular Wall Street Journal column, “Washington Wire,” which ran every Friday on the front page of the newspaper.
Political Wire has been running continuously ever since.
Interviews with Taegan Goddard
I discussed the early days of Political Wire with Duke University professor Aaron Dinan on the Web Masters podcast:
I was also on the Great Battlefield podcast with Nathaniel Pearlman:
