Goodbye tank tops in December. Hello lucrative job in Washington in early February.
Political reporter Dave Cantanese left Politico in January, 2013 under a swirl of controversy. In a New Years Eve resignation note, he took veiled swipes at some of his colleagues and bosses. At the time, he denied they were parting shots at all. But in 
2012, things had became tense when Catanese took an alleged self-punishing time-out after he went on Twitter and defended GOP Rep. Todd Akin and his “legitimate rape” slur. In March of 2013, the reporter got his act together to create TheRun2016.com, a site about the 2016 presidential race. He moved the operation to South Carolina to enjoy milder temps, but showed up to Washington area political events like CPAC.
And look at him now. Early this morning Cantanese announced that he has sold the blog to U.S. News & World Report. The entire sale is in the six-figure rage, sources to The Mirror have confirmed. He’s moving back to Washington to be an integral part of the operation at U.S. News. As senior politics writer, he’ll work under Brian Kelly and Tim Smart.
He wrote in his announcement, “I launched The Run 2016 last March with a healthy amount of earnestness, a bit of trepidation and fortunately, a bundle of support from friends, family and politicos, whose encouragement and advice became indispensable as I navigated this endeavor. … It also became a whirlwind learning experience in web design, server size (thanks Drudge!), email marketing, advertising and how to monetize journalism (gratzi Yellowhammer!) — most of which I knew next to nothing about ten months ago. (Luckily, I have exceptionally smart friends in these areas who helped right the ship or took over steering completely at times.) For most of these quandaries, I owe a debt of gratitude to my graduate school compadre Tim Baier, who runs Spiracle Media out of Charlotte. The site and its accomplishments wouldn’t have been possible without his dedicated counsel.”
Noteworthy: Tim Baier is Fox News anchor Bret Baier‘s brother.