This just in from Capitol Hill: Apparently there’s more than enough news to go around. In January, Allbritton Communications will start publishing The Capitol Leader, a newspaper and Web site promising insight into the machinations of Congress. It’s already made news by wooing away The Washington Post’s storied political editor, John Harris, and writer Jim VandeHei just after the midterm election. The Internet domain name “VandeHarris.com” was quickly sold. Bloggers are speculating about who else might bolt their old media homes to join the new venture. Media writers are musing that not since Lou Dobbs left CNN to start Space.com has there been so much buzz about journalists going digital.

Trying new approaches to help an industry evolve is a good thing, especially when your profession looks as if it’s going the way of the typewriter repairman. I quit a newspaper reporting job with much less fanfare back in 1998 to join a magazine and Web site purporting to cover “the Internet economy.” The Industry Standard set records for advertising pages until the dot-coms that bought ads went pop, taking the magazine with them. So I know a bit about boom-and-bust cycles and the attempt at surviving in a field that is being outmoded by technology.

The thing that confuses me about the Capitol Leader is the business model. And I’m not alone. “I don’t get it,” confessed Larry Grimes, president of W.B. Grimes & Co. investment bankers, which specializes in media mergers and acquisitions. “I can’t imagine that there is an editorial niche here that isn’t already covered. . . . All it’s going to do is dilute the advertising marketplace further.”

Real information about the new multimedia venture is sort of sketchy. Maybe that’s for competitive reasons. Maybe like everyone else in journalism these days, Allbritton’s concept for the media’s digital salvation is still evolving.

The company’s news release last month said that Harris and VandeHei would lead a Tuesday-through-Thursday Capitol Hill newspaper, but that the new venture would also combine the resources of Allbritton’s ABC affiliate, WJLA-TV; its 24-hour cable news operation, NewsChannel 8; and a partnership with CBS. The company says “the new platform will be anchored on the Web, pushing the next generation of political journalism: more conversational, more interactive and more transparent in taking the audience behind the scenes of how news happens and how it gets reported.”

Join the crowd. Several new Web-based political sites are being started or jump-started in anticipation of heavy interest in the 2008 campaign. HotSoup.com was launched by political operatives. The Huffington Post has just enticed Melinda Henneberger, a Newsweek editor, to jump ship and hire a staff to do original reporting. I’m waiting for someone to figure out how to use reader-generated content in gathering political news, given that YouTube had more influence in some campaigns this year than TV and newspaper coverage combined. Rather than send another free newspaper to congressional offices, there may be more to gain by creating a credible Capitol Hill news site for political junkies outside the Beltway, much like Red Sox fans worldwide follow their team on sites such as BostonDirtDogs.com.

Is Capitol Hill big enough for three newspapers? Since 1994, The Hill and Roll Call have been battling it out for readers and ad dollars by chronicling the ins and outs of Congress on newsprint. Both have added staff, increased frequency, and moved to the Web — and this fall Roll Call acquired Gallery Watch, a Web site providing the ability to search, track and analyze legislative information. Big mainstream media outlets have beefed up online coverage with blogs such as “The Note” by ABC’s political team and “The Caucus” by The New York Times. Subscription-based specialty publications, including Congressional Quarterly and National Journal, now provide some free online coverage every day.

True, the Federal Paper folded in 2003 after only four months when ad money failed to materialize. But “what they’re doing is different than what we were doing,” its editor, Mark Willen, who’s now at the Kiplinger Washington Letter, said of Allbritton. “We were trying to do a paper for the executive branch. We assumed the Hill market was already pretty saturated. It turns out that may not be the case.”

Fair enough. Martin Tolchin, who founded The Hill and initially led the new Allbritton venture, says there is room for another ad-supported publication as a way for lobbyists, unions, trade associations and the like to send a message to Congress. “Instead of taking a $100,000 plus ad in The New York Times or The Washington Post and be read by NIH scientists and bus drivers and restaurateurs, you spend about $10,000 and get a full page ad and be read by members of Congress and their staffers,” Tolchin said. “They can no longer spend it on Redskins box seats or three-martini luncheons, or steak dinners at The Palm.”

But will they instead spend it on advertising?

Capitol Hill drama has fueled countless blog entries, spawned Web sites and felled forests of newsprint. It can, however, feel like so many of those three-martini luncheons or steak dinners — too much to swallow, even if everything looks so good.

Contributing editor Elizabeth Wasserman is a Washington freelance writer. She can be reached at ewasserman@cq.com.