Ezra Klein Talks Shop

New York's Daily Intel has a great, wide-ranging interview with Ezra Klein that will no doubt be picked apart as the day goes on. So why not start now? You should, of course, read the whole piece, but below are some highlights. On those Vox Cards, which are getting plenty of good (and bad) attention: If media professionals look at this and think, That’s ridiculous, I already know all of this, that’s wonderful for us. It’s great on two levels. One is that if we are not aiming beneath our colleagues’ knowledge level, we’re making a huge mistake. We’re leaving tons of readers behind. Two: The more folks in the media feel like it’s beneath them to answers questions like, “What is marijuana?” or “What is Ukraine?” the more we don’t have to compete with them. Hilariously calling a Card that answered questions about Gwyneth Paltrow "culture:" I really don't like the way people look down on culture stories. Culture matters! There's no reason people shouldn't want to know about these stories, and we don't think we're slumming it when we tell them. On criticisms that new sites are too dominated by white males: On gender ratio, our editorial staff is not exactly 50-50, but we’re getting there and I am pretty committed to getting us there. Racial diversity is something we need to do a better job on. We focused on it early on but didn’t succeed in the way that we should have. We had some hires that we really hoped would work that fell through for totally normal reasons and then we didn’t correct quickly enough. On the rumor that he wanted $8 million from WaPo to help fund his new site: I did not ever go to the Post and say I want 10 percent of your budget. The eight-figure numbers that are around are silly.

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Ezra Klein Talks Shop

Chris O'Shea

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Chris O'Shea