Blake Hounshell, a witty and astute political observer who possessed a special knack for understanding the dynamics of internet journalism and became one of the driving forces behind POLITICO’s success over nearly a decade, died Tuesday morning at age 44.
Across his stints at Foreign Policy and POLITICO, Blake Hounshell edited hundreds of bylines, from senior policymakers to interns, making every story sharper and every headline snappier. | John Shinkle/POLITICO
Now a couple, they moved to Washington in the mid-2000s, arriving just as the capital’s media landscape was remade by the rise of the internet and social media, and where Hounshell’s career in journalism then paralleled — and helped shape — the rise and evolution of digital media at multiple publications.
“He had his encyclopedic knowledge of the world that was unparalleled among our staff. At FP, his job was to oversee the whole world, really, and the joke was always that we’d have lunch with, like, a Swedish diplomat, and he’d be like, ‘I was reading this obscure Swedish document and had this very specific question’ — things that no one could fathom how someone who had such a broad remit could know,” Kenner recalls.
Hounshell’s Twitter following grew to hundreds of thousands, in an era when such followings were all-but-unheard of, but he was hardly only a keyboard journalist: He reported on-the-ground from Tahrir Square and experienced the uprising up-close; his reporting forwas a finalist for the Livingston Awards, the prestigious recognition for the best journalism by journalists under 35.
Hounshell’s role in the POLITICO newsroom expanded steadily — he became the newsroom’s digital editorial director in November 2014, a role that saw him install a siren and red fire-engine-style light in the newsroom to mark when the website published scoops. He wowed colleagues with his ability to quickly grasp unique angles, conjure creative headlines, and understand what would connect with a web audience. He also led the site’s first top-to-bottom redesign.
Elizabeth Ralph, the current editor of POLITICO Magazine whom Hounshell mentored for years, recalls, “Blake completely appreciated the unconventional. He was always encouraging me to go down weird rabbit holes and telling me to follow my curiosity. He hated conventionality — anything vanilla. And he wanted Impact, with a capital I.”
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