Jim VandeHei

At that point in time, people did not leave the Washington Post.

They did not leave the New York Times.

And so the fact that like, well, here's Jim.

He's only been here three or four years and like whatever.

He's kind of a lone wolf.

And then Harris, John Harris, who was a creature of the institution, had been an intern at the Washington Post.

They took it more seriously because he was involved.

I think they thought we wouldn't do it.

So they at first said no.

But then they did mobilize.

Like people have criticized Don Graham for not trying harder to keep us.

To his credit, at the end, he made a very aggressive and ambitious bid to keep us there.

But by that point –

We really wanted to do it on our own.

And we just had this intuitive sense that doing this within an institution won't be as fun and probably won't be successful.

And so they were pissed by the time we left because when we left, Don Graham had this very famous meeting with us.

And he's like – he looked at us and he's like, I have never said this to anyone.

You are making a catastrophic mistake.

And –

Everybody thought we were making a catastrophic mistake.