Welcome back to In The Room.

I’m Dylan Byers. Tonight, as we approach the dawn of the 2024 presidential cycle, some scoops, news, and notes on a frenzied game of musical chairs in Washington media.

For the American political media, the months leading up to this time are a high-stakes trade window, when editors and executives go scouting for top talent that may be loose in the saddle elsewhere, or grease existing contracts to ensure the retention of their biggest stars. It’s already been a busy poaching season: Politico has lured its beloved native son Jonathan Martin back from The New York Times with a big salary and a sweetheart R.W. Apple-style gig. The Times, in turn, has poached star reporter Jonathan Swan from Axios, along with The Wall Street Journal’s Michael Bender, a Trumpworld whisperer, for lead roles on the 2024 beat.

And more moves are on the way as the trade deadline approaches: Alex Thompson, Politico’s White House correspondent, is the target of a contentious recruitment battle between Axios and Semafor, sources familiar with the matter tell me. And Axios’s Alayna Treene, the site’s star congressional reporter, is set to realize her long-held TV ambitions with a correspondent role at CNN, per sources familiar. She will be replaced on the congressional beat by Eugene Scott, who joins Axios from The Washington Post.

As with any major sport, this frenzied season of recruitment and retention offers an opportunity to take the pulse of America’s leading news media institutions, and a chance to handicap their prospects in the coming political season. After all, Washington media companies often mirror the myopic, optics-hungry, and validation-crazed world that they cover. And so while the casual observer may not notice the difference between two pretty good, brand-name-only-to-the-green-room class reporters with large Twitter followings, newsroom executives and start-up founders see these moves as major milestones—a signal of their ambitions and commitment to success in a highly competitive industry.

At Axios, for instance, the loss of both Swan and Treene represents the perhaps inevitable churn that occurs after a hot and buzzy media startup finds its exit—in this case, via a $525-million sale to Cox Enterprises—and matures into something bigger but also perhaps a little less exciting. Don’t feel bad for anyone, by the way. Mike and Jim made a well-deserved killing, presumably hauling in generational wealth, and their hustle and revolutionary insight into the changing units of the business, once foolishly underappreciated, were a necessary kick in the saddle for the industry.

But the company is going to be a different operation moving forward—no longer fueled by the Politico revenge fantasy, the hunger to disrupt the laggard behemoths, and the desire to prove out a thesis. It all worked and now Axios’s future is in the important, and insidiously lucrative, world of local news. Both Swan and Treene joined Axios at its founding and Swan, in particular, was crucial to its early success. Now that their options have vested and been triggered by a change of control, some money is in the bank and they’re free to fulfill their ambitions of working for more storied institutions.

In that context, perhaps, Axios’s ability to hire someone like Thompson becomes all the more significant—an indication that the recent departures don’t represent a post-sale exodus, necessarily, but perhaps just turnover, the dawn of a new era. And despite Axios’s local news investments and expansion into every niche vertical under the sun, from science to self-help, nothing will matter more to the brand’s reputation and ad revenue in the two years ahead than its relevance in American politics. It’s Mike Allen business is worth millions per month, and for good reason: it’s the A1 of the Acela corridor.

Semafor has also been beset by a number of papercut setbacks—some turmoil over sponsorship for its climate product, an investment from Sam Bankman-Fried—but the advertising inventory, and a launch into a recession, probably isn’t what Justin was hoping for. Hiring Thompson, who is writing a book about Biden slated for 2024, would allow them to stake a more significant claim on the election cycle and gain some much-needed momentum, though it’s hard to see how another D.C. journalist will materially advance its business.

The Post malaise has handicapped its talent recruitment efforts significantly: It fought hard to hire J-Mart, Swan and Thompson, sources familiar with all three recruitment efforts told me, and it failed to land a single one of them. The Post also recently lost one of its top editors, Steven Ginsberg, to The Athletic at the Times. One wonders what might happen if Josh Dawsey ever got restless. If the recent history of Politico, Axios, and Punchbowl is a guide, the Post’s top political reporters—Dawsey, Ashley Parker, Phil Rucker, and Carol Leonnig—could step out and into their own niche mediaco overnight. Presumably this isn’t the first time the thought has crossed Buzbee’s mind.

The Times itself remains the most secure of America’s political media institutions, of course, home to Maggie, Swan, Bender, Peter Baker, Michael Shear, Annie Karni, Lisa Lerer, David Fahrenthold (yet another Post evacuee), and so on, and is thus likely to maintain its position as the undisputed paper of record. Of course, that was never the company’s challenge. Instead, it suffered from the tenure that came to great reporters after their campaign swing ended, when they would have to be moved to Opinion or turned into various writers at large, sitting on the balance sheet for generations. Turnover, as this season is proving, is healthy, too.