Ezra Klein Featured at Distinguished Lecture Series
Ezra Klein during his lecture March 9th at Shannon Hall. Photo Courtesy of Tommy Yonash.
Students and community members praised both Ezra Klein and his news media venture, Vox, when he was invited on campus as part of the Wisconsin Union Directorate’s (WUD) Distinguished Lecture Series on March 9th.
Ezra Klein is the Editor-in-Chief of Vox, a news website that focuses on providing the most important news to consumers in ways that are extremely easy to absorb and comprehend. Vox does this through the use of graphs, lists and “Card Stacks.”
Ezra also spoke directly to interested students in an intimate Q&A and gave a public lecture about polarization and gridlock in Washington D.C. that night in Shannon Hall.
WUD Distinguished Lecture Series Director Khea Yashadhana said students and community members propose all speakers that come to come to campus as a part of the series the year and summer prior.
Vox’s signature feature “Card Stacks” utilizes previous journalistic work and provides context by defining key terms and concepts within an article and highlighting them in bright yellow. This was the most difficult part of starting Vox, Ezra said, because no one had done anything like it prior.
“The biggest surprise about my life was that I was a hard worker,” Ezra said.
Ezra described himself as never having an abstract desire to start things such as a company. Although, he felt like a lot of things in journalism were done wrong and he wanted to cater to the audience that he wasn’t able to at The Washington Post, which fostered the creation of Vox.
“The move for me [from The Washington Post] was not because I wanted to leave the Post,” Ezra said. “It was because I needed more staff and different technology. I needed to do something separate.”
This February, Ezra Klein and Matt Yglesias, both founders of Vox, had the opportunity to interview President Barack Obama. Ezra described the experience as scary because he had spent years trying to get the interview and knew he wanted to not make it feel and look like other interviews because he had limited swings at such an opportunity.
“We were really content on making something that was visually and substantially different,” Ezra said. “We wanted something that was not going to become outdated. We wanted to show people that this is how Obama thinks.”
During the discussion prior to his lecture with many journalism and political science-minded students, Ezra explained the need for complete obsession with the news and subjects in journalists. The trait he looks for most when hiring for Vox is an obsession with journalists’ subjects. If not, he finds that people often don’t stick with reporting long enough.
“To really be a good reporter, you have to really want it,” Ezra said. “If you dont, there are going to be amateurs, experts and professionals who will write about it better.”
“I have found that I am more stressed when not writing about politics than it is to write about politics.”
Made by students, for students, Ezra Klein’s lecture along with the rest of the Distinguished Lecture Series displays the reach and impact of student programming at the Union.
Who would you like to see at the next Distinguished Lecture Series? Share in the comments section below!
