Ezra Klein is leaving the Bezos Daily Bugle, possibly to go to Vox media, which publishes the Verge and SB Nation. He apparently tried to get Bezos to invest in a new venture, but Bezos was unwilling to throw down “eight figures”.
If Vox is starting a politics site, I’d be interested in reading it, because they’ve done great work with the Verge. Maybe this means that Ezra will be giving up his plan to be the next Broder, which would also be good news.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
I gather Bezos is still being a bit hands-off with his new toy, but the fact that the Graham-Weymouths are letting Klein go while keeping the likes of Woodward, Cohen and Krauthammer speaks volumes. David Broder was always stuck in a Nixon-less 1973, I guess the Grahams have made it all the way to 1982
Southern Beale
Unrelated but no open thread so here goes: massive fail at the Open Carry Texas rally in Austin over the weekend, as men in AR-15s and body armor get terrified by a homeless man with a garden trowel.
MattF
The link notes that Klein & Co is one of several new news/information web startups. ‘Gold in them thar hills’ & all that. Maybe.
Gin & Tonic
Can’t keep these guys straight. Is he the one who can’t spell?
Higgs Boson's Mate
Ezra only wanted eight figures for his new venture? Sheesh! I’ll bet that blogging millionaire John Cole is laughing up his sleeve at Bezos’ penny wise pound foolishness.
burnspbesq
Ezra is not and never has been an ideologue, and anyone expecting him to become one after leaving the Post is, in my view, likely to be disappointed.
NotMax
So a guy not yet 30, one who is invested professionally in electronically disseminated media, has decided to leave one job for another with a firm more attuned to that market.
Big whoop.
MattF
@Gin & Tonic: No, that’s Yglesias.
Shakezula
This is a really interesting time in journalism, with people trying to be at the head of the Next New Thing while established orgs. try to figure out what the fuck they’ll do next.
I also have to wonder if some of these ventures are being created in hopes of attracting a buyer.
Violet
Isn’t the Verge something Kos is involved in?
Warren Terra
I was genuinely shocked that Ezra was so foolish as to let the WaPo own the name WonkBlog. That institution was entirely of his own creation and was built around him, and it looks like the WaPo intends to keep it running without him.
rikyrah
ThinkProgress: Medicaid Expansion Has Already Cut The Number Of Uninsured West Virginians By A Third
West Virginia Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin’s (D) decision to accept Obamacare’s optional Medicaid expansion last spring is already paying off in a big way for the large number of poor and uninsured people in the state.
According to the New York Times, about 75,000 Wast Virginia residents have enrolled in Medicaid since Obamacare’s open enrollment season launched in October. While a portion of that consists of people who already had Medicaid benefits and are simply re-enrolling in the program, a sizable number of uninsured residents are gaining health benefits for the first time, thanks to the health law’s expanded eligibility threshold that allows anyone earning up 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level (FPL) to enroll in Medicaid. In fact, the number of uninsured people in the states has already been reduced by a third.
An analysis by the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) finds that the Medicaid expansion will eventually reduce West Virginia’s uninsurance rate by a staggering 67 percent.
http://thinkprogress.org/health/2014/01/21/3184311/west-virginia-medicaid-expansion/
shelly
Newsmax headline: Sean Hannity leaving NY.
Apparently his fee-fee’s were hurt by Gov. Cuomo. Well, as the saying goes “Don’t let the door hit ya….”
MikeJ
As much as I like Ezra I don’t know that I’d fork over $10M+ for him to start a new website.
rikyrah
NerdyWonka
Follow
How To Succeed In Journalism: Display ODS during #ObamaCare rollout, and a cash cow will fund your new venture.
Exhibit A: Ezra Klein.
8:55 AM – 21 Jan 2014
MattF
@NotMax: I disagree. I can see this sort of decentralization going on for a while, and then regrouping into no-kidding competition with traditional news sources. Hasn’t happened yet, but I think this makes it more likely.
Baud
Five Reasons Why You Should Care About Ezra Leaving WaPo
FourTen
They also do that tragically hip game site Polygon, right? The Vox/Verge masthead reads ‘too cool for you to be reading’ I think.
Southern Beale
@shelly:
I suppose he’ll be moving to Tennessee along with all of the other wackaloons.
Violet
@Warren Terra: I think he’s kind of his own brand. Maybe he’s going to move beyond “WonkBlog” as his brand into something else and it was a good chance to leave it behind.
Tommy
@Violet: I don’t know about Verge but Markos is behind SB Nation. Never talked about, but like a level of 10 above Daily Kos.
Tommy
@MikeJ: Oh I would. At times during 2012 estimates were the Wonk Blog brought in something close to 60% of all the web traffic for the Washington Post. Bill Simmons (a sports journalist) got an open check book to start Grantland, which is morphing from just sports into other things.
Heck in recent memory Nate Silver got tens of millions to head from the NYT to start his own media group at ABC/ESPN.
The Post fucked up here IMHO. I used to be a daily subscriber to the Post when I lived in DC. Now the Wonk blog is the only bookmark I have for them. When he leaves, so do I.
We are in a different media world where a “brand” like Nate or Ezra is maybe more important then anything else.
srv
Perhaps the John Coles of the Left can fund this project via their Amazon revenues. Supporting the Washington Post isn’t working out so great.
I’m not sure how 34K subscribers makes Sully’s project a success.
Citizen Alan
I’m quite please that Ezra is leaving WaPo. Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling, but now that he’s left, I can honestly say that there is no one still at that pitiful neocon rag that I don’t utterly loathe.
Ash Can
@Southern Beale:
What a great story. The fact remains that the people who are most in-your-face about their guns are the biggest cowards.
I must say, I’m glad I’m not an Onion writer reading that. I’d grab a bottle of bourbon, stick a straw in it, crawl into bed with it, pull the covers over my head, and stay there for the rest of the day. Or week.
PaulW
If Klein is hiring on, I’ve got an SB Nation account already working… :)
PaulW
If Klein is hiring on, I’ve got an SB Nation account already working… :)
Warren Terra
@Citizen Alan:
Weigel?
ETA whoops, he’s at Slate. I get the two muddled, though they no longer share ownership.
Higgs Boson's Mate
@srv:
Silly person! At the rate that Sullivan is raking it in it would only take 16 years for him to make that cool $10 million.
chopper
@shelly:
and the collective IQ of NY state goes up a full point.
Roger Moore
@srv:
34K readers would be piffle, but 34K subscribers is doing pretty well. They charge $2/month or $20/year for a subscription, so that’s around $700K/year in subscriber revenue. Maybe not the biggest thing in the world, but that should be enough to pay decent salaries and keep the lights on.
Tommy
@Ash Can: I am nothing close to a bad ass. But my father is and taught me to fight … strike that defend myself. I was always told to “turn the other cheek” and “walk away.” Never fight. If you have to fight, as Sun Tzu would say, you have already lost.
But the time or two I couldn’t walk away, the other person didn’t end up in a good place. Cause if you try to walk away and not engage and that person keeps trying to do so, you fight to win and harm the other person.
Never in my life did my father mention I might need a gun to do this. In fact there were tactics used to defend myself against somebody with a gun, which I was always taught was a “wimp” way to deal with stuff.
catclub
@Tommy: “Bill Simmons (a sports journalist) got an open check book to start Grantland, which is morphing from just sports into other things. ”
I have heard there is hate of Bill Simmons, but Grantland is excellent in my view.
srv
The John Cole supported website tells me Wendy Davis lied about her trailer time:
Southern Beale
@Ash Can:
I thought it had to be the Onion. I actually checked. The idea of some gun loons with weapons strapped to their bodies shouting at capitol police about a threat that they need to do something about NOW … honestly, I don’t know how the state police kept a straight face.
Barry
@Tommy: “The Post fucked up here IMHO. I used to be a daily subscriber to the Post when I lived in DC. Now the Wonk blog is the only bookmark I have for them. When he leaves, so do I.”
I left a comment over on that site pointing out that Bezos has left the hacks, wh*res and clowns of the WaPo Op-Ed page alone. That’s a powerful message to any young journalist there.
Violet
OT, but hilarious:
Chris Christie’s Inauguration Party Cancelled Because Of ‘Snow’
Ash Can
@Tommy: There’s a lot of wisdom in that. And naturally, everyone has the right to self-defense. These are the kinds of common-sense truisms that are completely lost on the gun freaks.
If you haven’t read Southern Beale’s link, I encourage you to do so. The account of the swaggering, tough, badass guy with his huge gun and body armor begging police officers for protection against some goof with a garden trowel is priceless, from start to finish.
Tommy
@catclub: Bill Simmons takes like ten pages to clear his throat (a phrase my major professor said about me). He felt he was restricted at ESPN. There is a ton of “hate” related to him, you are correct here. Some stuff he does I like. Other stuff I can’t stand.
But he went out on his own with Grantland, and that you are a fan might say he did well.
When you are Nate Silver. Ezra. Well you can command your own site and branding. The Post doesn’t seem to want to do that for Ezra. The NYT didn’t want to do that for Silver. Not sure the Gurdian was against it, but didn’t do it for Glen Greenwald.
These are brands, the person, that can go off and do gosh knows what. I mean I have to think these “younger” people look at what was/is done for somebody like Bob Woodward and ask for the same.
I think in hindsight, although I could have told them while it happened, they will regret letting them go. Mark my words on this!
cleek
this changes everything! about Ezra’s commute to work.
Cervantes
@Ash Can:
Except that, given that he perceived a problem, I’m glad he forgot the AR-15 on his back and went to the police instead. If I knew all the facts, I might even be prepared to give him some credit for it — because the alternative ending we might have been reading about today would have been far from “priceless.”
Ash Can
@Southern Beale: I also love the guy going up to the cops when he’s all decked out in his Call Of Duty Black Ops finery, they basically freak the fuck out, and Second Amendment Genius Guy is all “What? The assault weapon and kevlar? Don’t mind those, they’re nothing.”
Tommy
@Ash Can: I did read the first link. What is the word I am looking for …. he is a wimp. If you need a gun to be a “strong male” or just anything, then you are a joke. Most folks I know own guns (I don’t–never will). They view them as “tools.” Things they use to hunt. I don’t know a single person that owns a gun that think they are used to protect themselves.
I mean think about it for a second. You are asleep and somebody comes into your house with a gun, you have a gun, how do you think that is going to work out?
Bobby Thomson
@Southern Beale:
If I’m the trooper, I’m wondering if this is performance art. “Sir, I just see one potentially dangerous man here.”
different-church-lady
@Cervantes: “At least he’s not another Zimmerman” is a low bar, no?
Bobby Thomson
@MattF: And Coates.
Face
Those Amazon delivery helicopters don’t buy themselves.
Violet
@Tommy:
I do. My neighbors do for sure. Keep it in a locked safe by the bed. I think that’s hilarious because there’s no way he could get the gun out in time if someone broke into the house. No way. Remember the safe code under panic conditions after just waking up? No way.
Found out at Thanksgiving that everyone we were having Thanksgiving has a gun they use for “protection” as well, except for my family. A story was told of an unknown, drunk, scary, belligerent person knocking on the door of one of the people there in the middle of the night and pretty soon everyone was telling their “I grabbed my gun” stories. A couple of stories came out, including that one, where someone could easily have been shot and killed had the gun been grabbed earlier. Scary.
different-church-lady
@Ash Can:
Thanks for the idea!
Geeno
@Cervantes: That’s what I was thinking. Yes, it sounds ridiculous, but I’m glad he went the police route instead of self-enforcement.
Villago Delenda Est
@Warren Terra:
If he’s getting a steady royalty stream out of that, he’s probably not terribly concerned.
different-church-lady
@Face:
Yeah, but give it 18 months and someone at Google will figure out how to do it..
piratedan
would agree with about everyone else here, outsode of them posting the odd Krugman piece, why wwould anyone ever go to the WaPo again? So we can hear the same whackaloons that state that the President is near in a Baskin-Robbinsish 54 flavors of nuanced bigotry and idiocy, ummm.. no thanks, I get plenty of that here in AZ, why go trolling for it?
Tommy
@Bobby Thomson: I don’t own a gun. Fired one once. My dad owns a lot of them.
As a kid with a toy gun, I pointed it at my dad. He took it out of my hand and said never point a gun at somebody unless you plan to use it. That seems to be a pretty smart thing to say. Maybe how you’d teach people about guns. These are not little things, just what I’d say are important. Some respect and knowledge about guns.
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
This is why the gun fetishists CAN’T be “responsible gun owners”. Their weapons cannot be properly secured IF their sole purpose is to defend the castle…they must be available in a nanosecond to deal with some home invasion. Which means they need to be free…to be a toy for the three year old in the house, and I’m not talking about the one born in 2010.
Violet
@piratedan: Isn’t Krugman at NYT?
Villago Delenda Est
@Violet:
More like a shitstorm of woe that Christie is experiencing right now.
muricafukyea
Wonder if phone it in muckymux realises that Ezra displayed classic Obama Derangement Syndrome all through out the Obamacare rollout.
Now he seems to be somehow supportive as Ezra tries to cash in on that. Things that make me go hmmm.
Napoleon
@Violet:
That is why it would be odd to see him in the WaPo!
Tommy
@Violet: I recall living in DC. A terrible place at times. My house was broken into twice. My car broken into. Somebody took my girlfriends car and we never saw it again. I thought, I will get a gun. At that time it was illegal to do this in DC. I had a lot of friends. Older. Younger. Across the political spectrum. They all said the same thing, are you ready to have the gun taken away from you, then used on you?
I feel I am can fight, but they were like if you win will you shot that person? I was like no. They told me then, well don’t do it.
Villago Delenda Est
@muricafukyea:
FTFY.
WaterGirl
@Violet: I thought it was being cancelled because his dog ate his homework. Or maybe he had to wash his hair.
ranchandsyrup
@muricafukyea: His last sentence indicates that DPM did realize it
May be too subtle for you?
LanceThruster
@Tommy:
I had a Marine tell me something similar. Once that ‘candle is lit’ it becomes fight to kill, not fight to hurt.
jnfr
Greg Sargeant’s Plum Line is the only other regular thing I read at the Wash Post. I’ve been reading him since the Plum Line was his personal site. Then he was with TPM for a while before moving to the Post.
I’ve followed Ezra across four different sites and I’ll read him once he’s wherever he ends up.
Keith G
@muricafukyea:
Really? Not pure enough for ya?
Klein has generally been supportive of Obama’s initiatives including ACA. The rollout was an unforced own goal. One did not have to suffer ODS to note the many problems.
muddy
There is no constitutional right to carry a trowel, people. I can’t believe you people don’t appreciate the seriousness of this matter.
Mnemosyne
@Keith G:
Don’t feed the trolls.
HinTN
@MattF: Politico proved that
Scamp Dog
@srv: it means he’s taking in $680k/year, which ought to cover four or five full time people at decent wages plus some overhead costs. Of course, I have no idea how big his staff is, and less desire to spend time on his site figuring that out.
Scamp Dog
@Roger Moore: ah, didn’t see your answer before posting mine.
SiubhanDuinne
@Violet:
Love those scare quotes!
EthylEster
@Gin & Tonic: no, that’s Matt Yglesias.
Another Holocene Human
@Ash Can:
Nice racial undertone in this encounter between open-carry fundy and cops.
Tells like this are why we should NEVER give these motherfuckers power.
Another Holocene Human
@Ash Can: Proof that he is basically cosplaying and a giant nerd. Cops don’t “get” nerds and when I was cosplaying I was always told to do specific things to keep cops from thinking I might be a psycho with a real weapon who needed to be taken down.
Just a bunch of nerds, hobbyists, modellers, war otaku in deep, deep denial. Being raging racists probably doesn’t hurt.
Another Holocene Human
@Tommy: It’s interesting to hear this common Midwestern attitude articulated again. Even my batshit relatives from Kansas thought this way, or the older generation did. With years of hate radio spewing over the airwaves I have no idea what the younger generation thinks. Probably a lot of paranoia about Homeland Security buying all the bullets.
kindness
Ever since the WaPo put up the paywall I stopped reading them. I used to have Ezra bookmarked but wasn’t about to fork over subscription money to them so I deleted the bookmark after getting tired of being shown the paywall door.
I liked Ezra but he did seem to want to become a Villager if you know what I mean.
schrodinger's cat
@EthylEster: So many baby Villagers so little time.
Phil Perspective
@muricafukyea: Which is funny because he has inside sources at the WH. Klein is nothing if not a social climber. Then again, he used to claim that The Zombie-eyed Granny-starver was a serious intellectual. So he’s just kissing establishment ass all around.
ruemara
@Keith G: Sorry, but in this, Derf is right. Ezra acted ridiculously over the website. As if it was the sum totum of the ACA. He complained about the lack of hold music for christ’s sake. I was blown away by the scope of what he felt was unconscionable failure and how he completely ignored any positive aspects of the ACA and the website as a massive narrative for over a month. The poll drop Obama experienced during that point of time can be directly tied to the media taking that narrative and running with it. It was bizarre. So you can keep sneering about purity (why are the ones most likely to use that term, always the ones finding everyone else impure and therefore unworthy to even listen to?), but Ezra went from clear problems with the website into a strange parody of journalism. Only the fact that there isn’t any real news any more is what prevents people from realising this.
Phil Perspective
@kindness: Seemed? No, that was his goal all along.
ice weasel
Sorry, the Verge is a pile of shit that smells as bad as most other similar sites. It’s the same shit, repackaged, there’s no qualitative difference.
Skipjack
@ruemara: I disagree, if you’ve been reading him for long you know that health policy is his beat. The problems with the roll out of what is the most important federal government program in decades are what you should expect any good reporter to rake with a fine-toothed comb. He’s been very fair about highlighting the other aspects of Obamacare, I wouldn’t know half what I do about it if not for Ezra Klein.
I think it says a lot in his favor that he was furious that the rollout was botched, it hurts the Democrats, sure, but worse it discredits liberalism as a working political philosophy. I still lament what a great opportunity it was to show how government can work coming on the heels of the Republican shutdown.
Herbal Infusion Bagger
@Phil Perspective:
So what? I’ve been reading him since Pandagon days, and he’s remained worth reading through his gigs at different magazines before the WaPo. Whereas Jesse Taylor turned Pandagon into unreadable dreck after Ezra left.
Mnemosyne
@Skipjack:
You do know that the website still exists, right? And that millions of people have successfully purchased insurance through it?
Cervantes
@Mnemosyne:
Of course, but Keith G and Skipjack are right: the roll-out was an unforced error and a PR disaster. Instead of the Democrats contrasting themselves against the ineffectual Republicans, they had to play defense. The web-site still exists, yes, but the lost opportunity does not.
mclaren
At this point you can see Ezra Klein’s mind working as he angles for a spot as the next George Stephanopolous. Writing analysis of economic and political issues based on facts and math is hard. Charts turn people off.
Much easier to lounge around on a Sunday talk show lobbing softball questions to former war criminals and unindicted fraud co-conspirators:
“So, General Petreus, which one of your glorious victories stands out most in your mind?”
“And today our guest is Jamie Dimon, who will explain why a democracy functions more efficiently if we can eliminate the minimum wage and the laws against child labor…”
“Today’s immanent victory of American forces in Afghanistan — epochal mideast breakthrough, or just a game-changer for the region?”
Deep-throating the war criminals and financial crime lords and police state stasi pays a lot better than substantive fact-based policy analysis.
AxelFoley
@ruemara:
This. All this.
Jacel
Herbal Infusion Bagger: I think you’re misremembering the Pandagon.net timeline. Going back over a decade at this point, I recall that Jesse Taylor started the site, invited Ezra (then an underclassman at UC Santa Cruz) to co-blog. Then Jesse got a job working on a campaign and felt he needed to not do a blog in his own name. Ezra continued it solo, then added Amanda Marcotte as co-blogger. Then Ezra got the first of his series of blogging gigs elsewhere and departed. After a few years of the site being only Marcotte, Jesse started posting regularly again. Last year Amanda moved the Pandagon name to her contributions at the rawstory.com. I can’t tell who is keeping the lights on anymore at pandagon.net site. Maybe they’re waiting for Ezra to make an offer.
johnny aquitard
I have no idea why I read that first sentence as “Ezra Klein is leaving the Bezos Daily Bulge”.