Forty-five years after The Washington Star closed its doors, its long-running rivalry with The Washington Post is lurching back to life. NOTUS, a fledgling digital publication, is rebranding itself as The Star in June and is expanding in an attempt to take advantage of recent deep cuts at the Post, especially in local news and sports.
Katie Robertson reports in The New York Times that The Star plans to expand its newsroom from about 45 to 95 staff members by the end of the year. That’s still well short of the 400 to 500 that the Post employs, but The Star should presumably be able to carve out a niche by focusing on areas where the Post is weak. (Robertson’s story makes no mention of whether there will be a print edition. My guess is no.)