Greg Marx

[Commentary] Vox.com, the much-discussed new project from Ezra Klein, Melissa Bell, and Matt Yglesias. With the obvious disclaimer -- cautioned by the Vox crew -- that it’s way too early to draw any real conclusions, I agree with what seems to be the prevailing view online: It’s off to a pretty good start.

But if it’s still early to draw conclusions about the execution, one thing about Vox seems already clear: It’s going to be, basically, what you’d expect if you’ve been following Klein’s critique of the industry -- which is that journalism turns off news consumers by focusing too much on what’s new, and so makes it hard to understand why it matters, or what the big picture is.

When The Washington Post announced in mid-March that it would provide free digital access to subscribers of a half-dozen local papers around the country, the consensus take was clear: After years of hesitation, the Post, under Jeff Bezos, was finally looking to “go national” in a big way.

Under the arrangement, subscribers of six papers -- The Dallas Morning News, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser, and The Blade of Toledo (OH) -- will get digital-subscriber access to the Post’s website and apps once the pilot program launches in May. The local papers get an extra benefit to offer subscribers; the Post gets greater national reach, a local marketing boost, and a chance to build relationships with people who are already devoted news readers. No money changes hands. The offer is “intended for print subscribers [of local papers] only -- not for digital,” Steve Hills, the Post’s president and general manager, said.

For the Post, the new program is “a bigger bet” on the paper’s ability to attract a larger, engaged national audience while it also remains focused on its local market, said Hills. And while the arrangement will presumably make it a bit harder for the paper to sell web subscriptions in, say, Dallas or Minneapolis, he said the program can co-exist with the Post’s efforts to build its own digital subscriber base. “We think it’s a great fit for the industry, because so many papers have decided the key differentiation they have is local,” he added. From the Post’s perspective, a side benefit of the deal is that it adds another incentive to subscribe to local papers, he added.