Robert Allbritton, the billionaire media entrepreneur, said he was “pained” by the Washington Post’s decision to lay off a large chunk of its newsroom in early February. But he also saw it as an opportunity to hire some of the Post’s most well-known journalists, including many who would have been hard to poach in previous years.

“Opportunity knocks, and you’re going to decide if you’re going to answer the door or not,” Allbritton, 57, said. “I’m always the one that says: ‘Look, if an opportunity like this comes up, you ought to go on ahead and see what you can do with it and take it on full throttle, because these things don’t come along very often.’”

On Monday, Allbritton’s digital news publication Notus – which stands for News of the United States – announced several new hires, including longtime Post political columnist Dana Milbank, Congress reporter Paul Kane and chief economics correspondent Jeff Stein. The company plans to double its staff of 50 people by the end of 2026, a decision that Allbritton said was “precipitated” by the Post layoffs, which sped up the company’s longstanding plans to grow.

Milbank, in announcing his hire in a post on X, nodded to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s ownership of the Post, which has come under heavy scrutiny as he oversaw deep cuts to the newspaper despite being the fourth-richest person in the world.

“For me, this is an irresistible chance both to create the hometown publication the DC region needs and to build a scrappy and fearless national news organization,” Milbank wrote. “It feels wonderful to align myself with a public-spirited media owner who uses his billions to support journalism above all else, who isn’t afraid to hold the powerful to account and who cares deeply about the Washington community.”

Notus won’t attempt to replicate the Post on a large scale – Allbritton said the goal is to cover “what the professional community of Washington is interested in”, with a heavy focus on the federal government and the industries that do business with it.

“Look, we don’t want to be the Washington Post, but I think there’s a place for the journalism of the Post and the mission of the Post without a lot of the legacy expenses that were necessary when your organization was a print-based organization, and they’re just not necessary today,” he said.

“We appreciate the contributions of our departing colleagues and wish them success in the next chapters of their careers,” a Post spokesperson said.

Allbritton, the son of Joe L Allbritton, an extremely successful banker turned media owner, founded Politico in 2006 – along with journalists Jim VandeHei and John F Harris – and sold the publication to the German media conglomerate Axel Springer for more than $1bn in 2021.

In April 2023, he launched the Allbritton Journalism Institute (AJI) as a non-profit “educational incubator” to train the next generation of political reporters. The AJI operates a fellowship program that gives emerging journalists the opportunity to learn from and work with professional journalists and mentors and publish their work on Notus’s website.

The publication’s name, Notus, will change in the near future. Allbritton said he is working with trademark attorneys and is in touch with some trademark owners to see what is available. He said he’d like to have “Washington” in the name if possible.

Allbritton, who committed $20m to start the non-profit, wouldn’t pledge a specific dollar amount when asked how much he plans to spend on the Notus revamp.

“I think it just depends on who we can hire at this point in time,” he said. “There is no minimum. There is no maximum.”

Allbritton said he’s received positive feedback from advertisers based on the personnel announcements made on Monday.

While Bezos has not indicated in any way that he is open to selling the Post, despite reportedly receiving seven offers to do so, Allbritton said he got calls from people who thought he should try to buy it.

“I was like: ‘There’s no way I’m doing that,’” he recalled. “Because when I look at it, they’ve just cut their newsroom by a third. And it wouldn’t surprise me if there’s not more cuts coming at some point in time. And so [they’re] just in this weird position where it’s like you can’t really grow yourself out of it with revenue, and you can’t really cut yourself out of it. So I’m worried about it.”