You Gotta Suck Before you don't Suck

Ezra Klein is the wunderkid founder of Vox. He's also a young and obnoxious know it all whose taken it upon himself to 'explain' the news to us dullards.

In this old article, journalist Mark Judge asks, 'Has Ezra Klein ever been told off by an editor?' He guesses no.

It's not a pleasant experience, we can assure reader(s).  We learned early on.

Our first year at Wesley college we joined the student newspaper, The Whetstone. The paper was staffed by upper classmen and run by a 30 year old Air Force* vet. The staff had all known each other for a couple of years, and the previous year they'd been locked in a battle with the administration as they tried to cover the labor issues wracking the campus.** These young people were already hard-bitten, skeptical reporters. The moto on the wall, If everyone is happy with your newspaper, you're doing something wrong. 

The Whetstone was riven by personality conflicts, ego and envy, making for a toxic place. Putting the paper together usually took all night with sessions sometimes lasting till 6 AM. Tempers flared, nerves ran raw. One night the assistant editor tried to tell the editor what to do. The editor responded by pointing both fingers at him and said, 'Mike, I could kick your ass fucker!' The office was a tension filled boiler room.

Into this environment we stepped, a scared, insecure 19 year old.

Boy we learned a lot about writing and reporting. The staff knew plenty about both. We wrote sports, covered campus news and were expected to produce good, clean copy. When we failed, and we failed often, the editor, who at age 30 might as well have been our father, would ream us in front of the rest of the staff. We were once sat in the middle of the office and lectured by the staff on everything we were doing wrong. That was a rough afternoon. We can still feel our face turning red, our brow sweating, the sickening feeling in the pit of our stomach. The Whetstone kept us though, we must have been doing something right, or they must have spotted some potential, or maybe they just needed a warm body to cover sports. We were lucky.

We don't think Ezra Klein ever thought of himself as a warm body, or just lucky to be writing. We sure as heck do. Klein never had the HS sports beat. He never covered a football game and then ran across campus to cover the softball game, write the former while attending the later, and remembered to get a quote from the softball pitcher who gave up six runs and is pissed because your question implied it was all her fault.

We don't think Ezra Klein ever did that. 

*Dover, Delaware

**A messy affair that led to firings, lawsuits, protests and action by the National Labor Relations Board.