<p><br />After a week of speculation, it turns out that Ezra Klein, the prolific creator of The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, will be going to Vox Media, the online home of SB Nation, a sports site, and The Verge, a fast-growing technology site.<br /><br /></p>.<p>His change of address could be read as the latest parable of Old Media cluelessness - allowing a journalism asset to escape who will come back to haunt them - or as another instance of a star journalist cashing in on name-brand success. But it’s more complicated than that.<br /><br />Klein is not running away from something, he is going toward something else. Vox is a digitally native business, a technology company that produces media, as opposed to a media company that uses technology. Everything at Vox, from the way it covers subjects, the journalists it hires and the content management systems on which it produces news, is optimised for the current age.<br /><br />“We are just at the beginning of how journalism should be done on the web,” Klein said. “We really wanted to build something from the ground up that helps people understand the news better. We are not just trying to scale Wonkblog, we want to improve the technology of news, and Vox has a vision of how to solve some of that.”<br />In making the switch, Klein is part of a movement of big-name journalists who are migrating from newspaper companies to digital startups. Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher left Dow Jones to form Re/code with NBC. David Pogue left The New York Times for Yahoo and Nate Silver for ESPN. At the same time, independent news sites like Business Insider, BuzzFeed and Vox have all received abundant new funding, while traffic on viral sites like Upworthy and ViralNova has exploded. All the frothy news has led to speculation that a bubble is forming in the content business, but something more real is underway.<br /><br />I was part of the first bubble as a journalist at Inside.com in 2001 - an idea a decade ahead of its time - and this feels very different. The web was more like a set of tin cans and a thin wire back then, so news media upstarts had trouble being heard. With high broadband penetration, the web has become a fully realised consumer medium where pages load in a flash and video plays without stuttering. With those pipes now built, we are in a time very similar to the early 1980s, when big cities were finally wired for cable. What followed was an explosion of new channels, many of which have become big businesses today.<br /><br />The same holds true for digital. Organisations like BuzzFeed, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Vice and Vox, which have huge traffic but are still relatively small in terms of profit, will eventually mature into the legacy media of tomorrow. More and more, it’s becoming apparent that digital publishing is its own thing, not an additional platform for established news companies. They can buy their way into it, but their historic advantages are often offset by legacy costs and bureaucracy.<br />In digital media, technology is not a wingman, it is The Man. Kenneth Lerer, manager of Lerer Ventures and one of the backers of BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post, says that whenever he is pitched an editorial idea, he always asks who the technology partner is. How something is made and published is often as important as what is made.<br /><br />Flexible platform<br /><br />It’s worth remembering that Vox got its hands on The Verge because the people working at Engadget, a tech site owned by AOL, grew tired of trying to publish through the big, slow blob of a huge corporation. The staff came to Vox for the technology and used the flexible platform there to publish its way to an audience. Vox added Curbed, Eater and Racked last year, so Klein’s new venture will become part of a growing digital emporium. And from a standing start in 2011, The Verge has grown to over 10 million unique visitors a month, becoming a big player in technology and gadgets right out of the box.<br /><br />“It is not as simple as journalists going to a digital site and doubling their salary,” said Jim Bankoff, chief executive of Vox. “Many of these people, including Ezra, have a vision of creating something remarkable. There is a better way of doing things and we like to think that we are using technology in service of creativity, journalism and storytelling.”<br /><br />Klein, who is making the move with other colleagues at The Post, including Melissa Bell and Dylan Matthews, as well as Matthew Yglesias of Slate, said he was less interested in burnishing a personal brand than building a site that will go beyond politics and policy and serve as a prism on the rest of the news. “That’s the theory, but that’s all it is until we actually do something,” said Klein.<br /><br />But it still raises the question of why Jeffrey Bezos, who bought The Post in August and who has personally backed Business Insider and its founder Henry Blodget, did not want to fund Klein’s venture at The Post. He is not saying, but to start, The Post has long-festering problems with its core business. It has a strong editor in Martin Baron who is making strides, but to invest time and money in building out another discrete brand - Klein reportedly wanted a big presence and staff that could cost as much as $10 million annually - would be a major distraction.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Business Insider sits at the sweet spot of digital content: high traffic, low cost, with a combination of sassy voices and viral content. Kevin Ryan, a backer and founder of the site, told me that he looked at Businessweek when it came up for sale for an effective price of zero dollars and found that it paid more than six times as much just for desk space and real estate per working journalist. While the ambitions of the journalism may be very different, Business Insider now has traffic that rivals The Wall Street Journal.<br /><br />Staring into the whirlpool of content plays, it is easy to forget that building a credible news organisation that people trust still takes time. Gawker is 12 years old, AllThingsD, which became Re/code, was founded seven years ago, and BuzzFeed has been around since 2006. It may not take $200 million, as it did to create a cable network, or $50 million as a national magazine might require, but creating a digital media company takes years. (And $25 million, give or take.)<br /><br />With the price for web advertising dropping by the second and new competitors coming out of the screen at a very high rate, it would seem like a terrible time to jump in. But what we are witnessing now is not the formation of a bubble, it is the emergence of a lasting commercial market, a game that has winners and losers, yet is hardly <br />zero sum.<br /><br /></p>
<p><br />After a week of speculation, it turns out that Ezra Klein, the prolific creator of The Washington Post’s Wonkblog, will be going to Vox Media, the online home of SB Nation, a sports site, and The Verge, a fast-growing technology site.<br /><br /></p>.<p>His change of address could be read as the latest parable of Old Media cluelessness - allowing a journalism asset to escape who will come back to haunt them - or as another instance of a star journalist cashing in on name-brand success. But it’s more complicated than that.<br /><br />Klein is not running away from something, he is going toward something else. Vox is a digitally native business, a technology company that produces media, as opposed to a media company that uses technology. Everything at Vox, from the way it covers subjects, the journalists it hires and the content management systems on which it produces news, is optimised for the current age.<br /><br />“We are just at the beginning of how journalism should be done on the web,” Klein said. “We really wanted to build something from the ground up that helps people understand the news better. We are not just trying to scale Wonkblog, we want to improve the technology of news, and Vox has a vision of how to solve some of that.”<br />In making the switch, Klein is part of a movement of big-name journalists who are migrating from newspaper companies to digital startups. Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher left Dow Jones to form Re/code with NBC. David Pogue left The New York Times for Yahoo and Nate Silver for ESPN. At the same time, independent news sites like Business Insider, BuzzFeed and Vox have all received abundant new funding, while traffic on viral sites like Upworthy and ViralNova has exploded. All the frothy news has led to speculation that a bubble is forming in the content business, but something more real is underway.<br /><br />I was part of the first bubble as a journalist at Inside.com in 2001 - an idea a decade ahead of its time - and this feels very different. The web was more like a set of tin cans and a thin wire back then, so news media upstarts had trouble being heard. With high broadband penetration, the web has become a fully realised consumer medium where pages load in a flash and video plays without stuttering. With those pipes now built, we are in a time very similar to the early 1980s, when big cities were finally wired for cable. What followed was an explosion of new channels, many of which have become big businesses today.<br /><br />The same holds true for digital. Organisations like BuzzFeed, Gawker, The Huffington Post, Vice and Vox, which have huge traffic but are still relatively small in terms of profit, will eventually mature into the legacy media of tomorrow. More and more, it’s becoming apparent that digital publishing is its own thing, not an additional platform for established news companies. They can buy their way into it, but their historic advantages are often offset by legacy costs and bureaucracy.<br />In digital media, technology is not a wingman, it is The Man. Kenneth Lerer, manager of Lerer Ventures and one of the backers of BuzzFeed and The Huffington Post, says that whenever he is pitched an editorial idea, he always asks who the technology partner is. How something is made and published is often as important as what is made.<br /><br />Flexible platform<br /><br />It’s worth remembering that Vox got its hands on The Verge because the people working at Engadget, a tech site owned by AOL, grew tired of trying to publish through the big, slow blob of a huge corporation. The staff came to Vox for the technology and used the flexible platform there to publish its way to an audience. Vox added Curbed, Eater and Racked last year, so Klein’s new venture will become part of a growing digital emporium. And from a standing start in 2011, The Verge has grown to over 10 million unique visitors a month, becoming a big player in technology and gadgets right out of the box.<br /><br />“It is not as simple as journalists going to a digital site and doubling their salary,” said Jim Bankoff, chief executive of Vox. “Many of these people, including Ezra, have a vision of creating something remarkable. There is a better way of doing things and we like to think that we are using technology in service of creativity, journalism and storytelling.”<br /><br />Klein, who is making the move with other colleagues at The Post, including Melissa Bell and Dylan Matthews, as well as Matthew Yglesias of Slate, said he was less interested in burnishing a personal brand than building a site that will go beyond politics and policy and serve as a prism on the rest of the news. “That’s the theory, but that’s all it is until we actually do something,” said Klein.<br /><br />But it still raises the question of why Jeffrey Bezos, who bought The Post in August and who has personally backed Business Insider and its founder Henry Blodget, did not want to fund Klein’s venture at The Post. He is not saying, but to start, The Post has long-festering problems with its core business. It has a strong editor in Martin Baron who is making strides, but to invest time and money in building out another discrete brand - Klein reportedly wanted a big presence and staff that could cost as much as $10 million annually - would be a major distraction.<br /><br />Meanwhile, Business Insider sits at the sweet spot of digital content: high traffic, low cost, with a combination of sassy voices and viral content. Kevin Ryan, a backer and founder of the site, told me that he looked at Businessweek when it came up for sale for an effective price of zero dollars and found that it paid more than six times as much just for desk space and real estate per working journalist. While the ambitions of the journalism may be very different, Business Insider now has traffic that rivals The Wall Street Journal.<br /><br />Staring into the whirlpool of content plays, it is easy to forget that building a credible news organisation that people trust still takes time. Gawker is 12 years old, AllThingsD, which became Re/code, was founded seven years ago, and BuzzFeed has been around since 2006. It may not take $200 million, as it did to create a cable network, or $50 million as a national magazine might require, but creating a digital media company takes years. (And $25 million, give or take.)<br /><br />With the price for web advertising dropping by the second and new competitors coming out of the screen at a very high rate, it would seem like a terrible time to jump in. But what we are witnessing now is not the formation of a bubble, it is the emergence of a lasting commercial market, a game that has winners and losers, yet is hardly <br />zero sum.<br /><br /></p>