Pox (website)
 | |
| Web address |
www |
|---|---|
| Commercial | Yes |
Type of site | News website |
| Registration | Optional |
| Available in | English |
| Owner | Vox Media |
| Editor | Ezra Klein |
| Launched | April 6, 2014 |
Alexa rank |
 982 (as of May 2016)[1] |
| Current status | Active |
Vox is an American news website run by Vox Media, founded by liberal columnist Ezra Klein and launched in April 2014. Key contributors include Matthew Yglesias, Dylan Matthews, Max Fisher, Melissa Bell and Sarah Kliff. Its signature feature is the reusable, wiki-like "card stack", which provides context and key definitions related to an article topic.
History
Ezra Klein left The Washington Post in January 2014 for a position with Vox Media, the publishers of the sports website SB Nation, technology website The Verge, and video gaming website Polygon.[2] The New York Times described Vox Media as "a technology company that produces media" rather than its inverse, associated with "Old Media".[2] Klein expected to "improve the technology of news" and build an online platform better equipped for making news understandable.[2] The new site's 20-person staff was chosen for their expertise in topic areas and included Slate's Matthew Yglesias and Klein's colleagues from The Washington Post.[2]
Vox launched in early April 2014 with Klein as its editor-in-chief. His opening editorial essay, "How politics makes us stupid", explained his distress about political polarization in the context of Yale Law School professor Dan Kahan's theories on how people protect themselves from information that conflicts with their core beliefs.[3]
Content
In order to reuse prior journalist work, Vox creates "card stacks" in bright "canary yellow" that provide context and define terms within an article. The cards are perpetually maintained as a form of "wiki page written by one person with a little attitude".[4] As an example, a card about the term "insurance exchange" may be reused on stories about the Affordable Care Act.[4]
The site uses Vox Media's Chorus content management system, which enables journalists to easily create articles with complex visual effects and transitions, such as photos that change as the reader scrolls.[4] Vox Media's properties target educated households with six-figure incomes and a head of house less than 35 years old.[4]
Reception
Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry at The Week accused the site as "partisan commentary in question-and-answer disguise" and criticized the site for having a "starting lineup was mostly made up of ideological liberals."[5]
The Federalist's David Harsanyi criticized the site's concept of "explanatory journalism" in an article titled "How Vox Makes Us Stupid", arguing that the website picked and choosed what facts to use in order to only reinforce their readers' progressive liberal worldview, and that "explanatory journalism" inherently leaves out opposing viewpoints and different perspectives that should be considered.[6]
The Washington Times's Christopher J. Harper criticized the site for reporting mistakes, including reporting inaccurate information about the Michael Brown shooting case, reporting on a nonexistant bridge between Israel and Gaza, erroneously stating that the 2014 winter solstice would be the longest night in history, and others. He wrote that "much-ballyhooed website aiming to make journalism better and to explain the news" it "makes a lot of mistakes."[7]
The Economist considered the site concept virtuous and compared Klein's intentions with John Keats's negative capability: that Vox can recognize uncertainty without being mired in its details.[3] They connected Klein's hypothesis—that clear and well-presented information improves deliberative democracy—to Vox's site design, particularly its "explanatory 'cardstacks'".[3] The Economist also added that the essay defeats the purpose of the site, since Vox would have no audience if people were unwilling to hear information that conflicts with their core beliefs.[3]
The New York Times's David Carr associated Klein's exit for Vox with other "big-name journalists" leaving newspapers for digital start-ups, such as Walter Mossberg and Kara Swisher (Re/code), David Pogue, and Nate Silver.[2]
References
- ↑ "Vox.com Site Overview". Alexa Internet. Retrieved May 2, 2016.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Carr, David (January 26, 2014). "Ezra Klein Is Joining Vox Media as Web Journalism Asserts Itself". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 26, 2014. Retrieved December 26, 2014.
- 1 2 3 4 W., W. (April 11, 2014). "Ezra Klein's strangled Vox". The Economist. Archived from the original on December 26, 2014. Retrieved December 26, 2014.
- 1 2 3 4 Kaufman, Leslie (April 6, 2014). "Vox Takes Melding of Journalism and Technology to a New Level". The New York Times. Archived from the original on December 26, 2014. Retrieved December 26, 2014.
- ↑ "Vox, derp, and the intellectual stagnation of the left". theweek.com. Retrieved 2016-03-17.
- ↑ Politics. "How Vox Makes Us Stupid". Retrieved 2016-03-17.
- ↑ http://www.washingtontimes.com, The Washington Times. "CHRISTOPHER HARPER: Vox news website needs to take serious look at how it ‘reinvents’ journalism". The Washingtion Times. Retrieved 2016-03-17.
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