Ezra Klein Leaving Washington Post: Split Underscores Larger Tension in Era of 'Personal Brand Journalism'

I like the idea of the "personal brand." And it's especially cool when your brand is bigger than the biggest corporate media behemoths.

Ezra Klein's gonna be just fine, whatever he does.

At Politico, "Why The Washington Post passed on Ezra Klein":

Breaking: white dude journos like Ezra Klein, very excited to see what he does next.

— allisonkilkenny (@allisonkilkenny) January 21, 2014

The Washington Post would do anything for Ezra Klein. Well, almost anything.

For nearly five years, the Post has steered a bounty of financial resources to its star economics columnist and blogger. It has allowed him to have a contributor deal with MSNBC, a column with Bloomberg View, and to write long-form for The New Yorker. It has provided him with eight staffers to keep Wonkblog, his popular policy vertical, flowing with up-to-the-minute charts and analysis. The PR department has promoted him in profile upon profile.

But when Klein proposed the creation of an independent, explanatory journalism website — with more than three dozen staffers and a multiyear budget north of $10 million — the Post said enough is enough. Indeed, Jeff Bezos, the Post’s new owner, and Katharine Weymouth, its publisher, never even offered an alternative figure, sources familiar with the negotiations said.

Now, Klein is set to take his talents elsewhere. The Washington Post’s Wonkblog account tweeted the announcement Tuesday that he is leaving: “It’s official: Ezra is leaving the Post. Hoping for the best for him.”

As early as this week, Klein is expected to announce a new venture — described in a memo to Post staffers as a new “news organization” — that will look to staff more than 30 people on the editorial side alone. Meanwhile, the Post, which for four years has benefited immensely from housing the Ezra Klein brand — Wonkblog averages more than four million page-views a month — will lose its star columnist and its claim to some of the most widely read policy analysis on the Internet.

The split, which has become a point of tension in the newsroom and the talk of the town in Washington, underscores a larger tension in the era of personal-brand journalism. Big media institutions go to great lengths to feed the egos (and pockets) of their growing stars, cultivating their image and reaping the rewards of high traffic. But when that brand becomes too expensive, or so big it threatens to outshine the institution itself, the institution is forced to let it go.

And seriously, I fail to see the white privilege racism here, but Allison Kilkenny's pretty much psycho like the rest of the leftist trans* freaks I've been dealing with.