In December it was reported that Ezra Klein was leaving the Washington Post because of a dispute over the funding of a new web project that Klein wanted the paper to sponsor. Now Klein and his cadre of bloggers have announced some details of that new project, saying that their site will report the news while adding the “crucial context” that will help readers understand it.
On January 2 it was made clear that Klein was out at the Washington Post, and by January 26, Klein took to the website TheVerge.com to announce his new site. It is to be called Vox.
Saying he intends to “fix the news” with Vox, Klein bemoaned the failure of the Internet to make the news better at delivering the “crucial context” people need.
“Today, we are better than ever at telling people what’s happening,” Klein wrote, “but not nearly good enough at giving them the crucial contextual information necessary to understand what’s happened. We treat the emphasis on the newness of information as an important virtue rather than a painful compromise.”
Klein and crew intend to create a site that is as good at “explaining the world as it is at reporting on it.” The talent joining him at Vox includes blogger Matt Yglesias, best known for being terrible at blogging.
By leaving the Washington Post and teaming with TheVerge.com, Klein finds himself with a significantly smaller platform but, presumably, nowhere near the editorial control of Andrew Sullivan, who left the Daily Beast in 2013, funding his blog The Dish solely with reader subscriptions.
In the meantime, since Klein folded his Wonkblog at the Washington Post, the paper hired on the bloggers at the well-known libertarian legal blog, the Volokh Conspiracy. Founded in 2002 by UCLA School of Law professor Eugene Volokh, the blog has become one of the most visited legal blogs in the country.
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