Matt Yglesias Named Executive Editor of Ezra Klein's New Vox Media Venture

Matt Yglesias will serve as executive editor of the new Vox Media venture founded by Ezra Klein, FishbowlNY has learned. "That is my title," Yglesias confirmed to FishbowlNY in an email Monday morning. "Now obviously the website itself needs a name and I suppose titles could change too as we build out the team, but 'executive editor' is the title Ezra and Melissa and I have had down on paper for me for months." Klein will be editor-in-chief. Slate's prolific economics blogger announced last week that he would join Klein, The Washington Post who recently quit to start his own publication with staff from his popular policy site, Wonkblog. “There’s not much to say at this point,” Yglesias told The New York Times last Thursday, declining to provide details of his new position, “other than that I’m very excited to be part of this team and we’re hoping to announce some more stuff in the near future.” But when Klein announced in a post on The Verge on Sunday that he would launch his new site with Vox, he and Yglesias chimed into the comments below. And, thanks to Vox's comment system, which verifies official authors with a checkmark and job title, Yglesias revealed his role as executive editor. According to Klein's post, Yglesias, along with Wonkblog veteran Melissa Bell, has been involved with the planning process since early last year. While the division of top editors' duties differs at every publication, editors-in-chief contribute editorially but tend to focus on the overall brand and business of new journalism startups. Executive editors, on the other hand, have greater say in managing the newsroom and daily content. Henry Blodget oversees Business Insider as EIC and CEO, while Joseph Weisenthal is up at 4 a.m. every day to spearhead the site's coverage. Arianna Huffington, The Huffington Post's president and EIC, serves as the face of the AOL-owned media group, as Roy Sekoff signs off on edgy splash pages and projects like HuffPost Live. An exact distinction between the responsibilities of Ben Smith and BuzzFeed executive editor Doree Shafrir is difficult to define, but the latter certainly remains more behind the scenes. What is important, though, is that the two are compatible. Responding to a reader who touted The Financial Times as an example of why newspapers are still worth your money, Yglesias shared a similar vision with Klein of filtering the days news by context instead of consecution. "The FT is great," he wrote, "but we think it’s possible to use digital technology to ultimately make general news coverage even better and more useful than even the very best newspapers in the world have ever been able to do." [Writer's note: This post was updated at 7:25 a.m. with confirmation from Yglesias.]

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Matt Yglesias Named Executive Editor of Ezra Klein's New Vox Media Venture

Alexander C. Kaufman

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Alexander C. Kaufman