The Hill’s SVP for editorial content Bill Sammon has explained how its subscription launch aims to let “superfans” of the political newsbrand “geek out” with its journalists.
This month The Hill launched Hill Insider – its first online paywall – which provides a variety of premium paid products while most of its content remains free and supported by advertising. This includes deeper-dive written content, subscriber-only newsletters and five weekly video shows that are effectively interactive calls with The Hill journalists.
These include Editor’s Call, which is essentially a weekly version of the regular newsroom meetings led by editor-in-chief Ian Swanson, and The Gavel, which accompanies the free-to-access Supreme Court newsletter of the same name.
Sammon told Press Gazette The Hill wanted to better serve its “superfans” who read multiple articles and “come back again and again and again”.
He said: “As much as we provide voluminous content to our loyal readers, they always want more.”
Of shows like The Gavel, he said: “Members of Hill Insider are encouraged to dial in and call in and ask questions or write comments and it’s very interactive and we’re able to take it to another level of granularity, another level of depth, another level of sort of actionable journalism.
“We have a ton of that in our regular coverage of The Hill, but it’s nice to have a place that we can kind of geek out to the next level. We can really go down certain rabbit holes, and people are there with us.”
The Hill Insider costs $5.99 per month or $59.99 per year for the basic membership, which includes access to all gated content, or $9.99/$99.99 for the premium membership which adds VIP access to The Hill events and an ad-free website experience. New subscribers can try it for free for 14 days.
Sammon said the subscription means “you can really go to that next level” of reporting and insight “and not take anything away from the daily quality and quantity that we’re providing to the public for free”.
Traffic at The Hill can be turbulent and dependent on the news cycle. In 2026 it has gone from a high of 51 million US visits in January to a low of 29 million in June (which was down 17% year on year) according to Similarweb.
But Sammon said the paywall was not a recent decision relating to any traffic fluctuations and that The Hill has been working towards the launch for about 18 months.
“As any publisher will tell you, traffic goes up, traffic goes down, traffic goes back up,” Sammon said, advocating a quarterly or annual view of the numbers.
According to Comscore, The Hill’s total page views in 2025 were up 7% compared to the year before to 1.24 billion while its average monthly reach (excluding social and Youtube) was up 14% in Q4 2025 to 33.4 million.
The Hill said it has ranked first for unique visitors among US political news websites for the past eight consecutive months, citing Comscore.
Instead Sammon said it was “smart for any publisher to always be looking for ways to diversify revenue streams. We have a significant revenue stream from our traffic, from advertising, from our very robust events department, and so it just makes sense to always be looking at the next thing.
“And that doesn’t mean you’re turning away from any of these other revenue streams. That means you’re just adding more and broadening your approach.”
He added that there is “cross-pollination” between the revenue streams, saying that exclusive events for paying Hill Insiders are under discussion.
Sammon said The Hill’s journalists increasingly “expressed not only a willingness, but a desire” to offer extra content in their area of expertise.
“It’s given an additional outlet to people,” he added.
The Editor’s Call, which like the other shows was soft-launched for free before the paywall went live, does not tend to preview all of the team’s upcoming stories but will discuss the “broad themes” around what’s going on and what to cover.
Asked the extent to which the journalists have to adjust what they say compared to a typical news meeting because members of the public are present, Sammon said: “They’re pretty candid. Maybe they clean up their language a little bit, but they’re not prone to that kind of thing to begin with. I think when you’re in a meeting with just your colleagues, there may be a slight distinction between that and having guests and readers join that meeting.
“But I tell you, we’re pretty transparent anyway… It’s pretty freewheeling, and the public’s allowed to ask anything they want, and we go where they want to go.”
Sammon also said it would be “wrongheaded” to dumb down the stories for public consumption. “News consumers are so sophisticated, are so intelligent, and it’s not just in DC,” he said.
“Everybody now is a very sophisticated consumer of news. They’re very sophisticated observers of policy and politics, particularly, and so we’re just trying to keep up with our readers. We want to give them what they want, and this seems to be what they want.”
On Tuesdays, subscribers get The Fight for 28 with The Hill’s senior political correspondent Amie Parnes who co-wrote a bestselling book about the last presidential election campaign named Fight, while Wednesday’s show is The Gavel.
Thursday is Data Nerds in conjunction with election data provider Decision Desk HQ, and Fridays offer Whole Hog Politics hosted by Sammon with political editor Chris Stirewalt who writes the weekly newsletter of the same name.
Sammon said a Supreme Court justice approached a Hill journalist at recent event in Washington DC and said, “we’re all reading The Gavel, we love The Gavel.”
He said: “My mind is being blown here. You put this out into the world, and people really respond.
“It’s really gratifying that we’re being read by not just the movers and shakers here in Washington, the big shots… but 95% of our audience is outside of the Beltway, so we have so many people that are highly engaged, that are really enjoying this, and we’re we’re here for both groups.”
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