Ezra Klein speaks about Vox and the media

Excerpts from an interview published Apr 11, 2014 at nymag.com titled Ezra Klein on Vox’s Launch, Media Condescension, and Competing With Wikipedia

Q: The cards have come in for a little bit of mockery already from media people — things like “What is marijuana?” and “What is the internet?” How do you decide where the line is for how basic these are going to get, in terms of subject matter?

EK: We want them very basic. I am ecstatic over that kind of mockery. 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. You don’t have to read everything; there’s a table of contents.