Vox and Ezra Klein: testing the limits of the digital-news expansion

[Commentary] Last November, Vox turned heads when it bought Curbed Network, a trio of cheeky real estate, food, and style sites, for a mix of cash and stock valued at $20-$30 million. At the time, a new era of consolidation was reported to be taking hold among a new cadre of digital powers, Vox being foremost among them. Reuters writer Felix Salmon quoted Henry Blodget, CEO and Editor-in-Chief of The Business Insider saying: “Somebody’s going to build the Time Inc of digital media.” The idea being that costs for back-office, technology, sales and other functions can be shared among a growing number of titles. The Vox acquisition of Washington Post blogger Ezra Klein and his team, which includes Melissa Bell and Dylan Matthews, as well as Matthew Yglesias of Slate, does nothing to throw cold water on that theory.

The story on journalism’s print side is one of retrenchment or, at best, holding on for dear life. The one bold experiment in print expansion has already hit a wall. Print is still basically a disaster area. Meanwhile, a few digital publishers are succeeding, or least expanding. Even if the number of winners is small, their success stands in sharp contrast to a difficult landscape for the news generally. And here’s where things get interesting. Ezra Klein told David Carr that the goal of the site is to go beyond politics and policy and serve as a prism on the rest of the news. That sounds valuable. The question is whether it can also be profitable. It is beyond question that a new generation of digital journalism has arrived. The growth of Vox, for instance, feels measured, deliberate, and organic. Now it is about to learn whether its model and popularity can be translated to policy analysis and some as-yet-to-be-determined take on public-interest news.