Vox Appreciation Thread

[tschu]

About a month ago we saw the launch and subsequent explosion of a really incredible website and something that, if it can keep up the incredible content production that it is currently doing, might make a lot of people think about the traditional ways that they get their news (Newscorp empire, CNN, NBC, mainstream newspaper and AP, that sort of thing).

 

Vox.com home page

 

 

 

 

 

What is Vox?

 

Vox Media was already a fairly successful group of blogs - and this is nothing new. We've seen it before with the Gawker Media series of blogs, and the network of sites that Vox has set up is quite similar, really. Currently, the main member sites of Vox.com are:

• SB Nation - this is likely the one that most Huskerboarders are most familiar with. They are very similar to Gawker's Deadspin, but a tiny little more on the clean/professional side.
  
• Polygon - a gaming site that is actually pretty phenomenal. Again, very similar to Gawker's Kotaku, but with more self-produced content, a better interface, cleaner and a bit more formal with their posting.
  
• The Verge - a science, technology, consumer product, culture, occasional-mainstream-news blog. Think CNET merged with Popular Mechanics merged with CNN merged with TIME Magazine. It's not bad but I can't see why it is as popular as it is. Again, the general clean-ness of the site probably works in its favor.
  

There are a few other associated blogs but they aren't as big and I'm not familiar with them.

 

 

 

 

But that leads us to the big one - Vox.com. Vox was launched by Ezra Klein - a guy who has written and blogged about politics and policy for the Washington Post for a long time. He became well known and extremely well respected for his ability to write in such a concise yet correct manner about a huge variety of subjects. He was even named one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington by GQ at one point. Vox.com is his brainchild.

 

Vox mainly aims to provide a very clean, fact-driven analysis of current events, political news and policy. You can read Ezra's postings about the creation and launch of Vox here:

Welcome to Vox: A Work in Progress

How We Make Vox

 

What can I find on Vox?

 

Vox and Nate Silver's new website FiveThirtyEight were launched at similar times. Vox has become everything that I was hoping that FiveThirtyEight would be. Whereas FiveThirtyEight has taken a lighter, less serious, lower-content type of model than I was hoping (apparently really cool statistical analyses are believed to not drive traffic? IDK), Vox has not been afraid to dive into the most hard-hitting issues found in the news and American politics today. Their content provides

• Clean and concise breakdowns of very complicated issues
  
• Legitimate, non-spun, non-cooked statistics and cited sources (it's a breath of fresh air, really)
  
• A very well-designed look to the website - at first the yellow might seem harsh, but spend a day on the site and you'll see exactly how great their graphic design team is
  
• Occasionally pointed remarks aimed at groups and people, when the facts deem it necessary (not brash trolling like some blogs and not pu&&y-footing around like AP and mainstream newsprint)
  

But the big feature is their Understand the News section. For reasons such as educational failure, misleading/biased news corporations, talking heads like Rush, and mainly just the sheer amount of disinformation out there muddying up already complex laws and policies such as Obamacare, most people truly have no grasp on the things that they're voting on and providing strong opinions on. Since we live in a democracy, well, this is a problem.

 

 

 

Understand the News is set up as a series of "cards" that you can click through. No, don't think "Bleacher Report"...it's not like that. Each series of cards explains in plain language the fundamentals of a complex issue or news story. They've had card sets on the big-ticket stuff like Obamacare and Benghazi, as well as other important but less talked-about issues such as Bitcoin and student loan debt.

 

 

Why is this important?

This is yet another step in making news less of a corporate-run big business model and more of a fact-driven, wide-open source for real information. Vox doesn't appear to have any political agendas (although the right-wing is already going nuts about it - but in general, facts tend to have a liberal bias because - well - you know.). Vox, as its own entity, can tackle whatever issues present themselves and has the ability to call out politicians or corporations or whatever for their bullsh#t. Big Mainstream Media can't do that - they have to play things safe, cater to their target audience, as well as looking our for their own private interests. You can't call out a business partner or a politician who is working in your favor. But Vox can.

 

I encourage you to check it out, make it your main source of news, set it as your home page, make sweet sweet love to it and all that.

 

It's very good.

[BigRedBuster]

I checked it out and was impressed with their article on GMOs.

 

I'm sure I will be back.

[carlfense]

Good call on a post devoted to Vox. They're already very, very impressive. Good writing, good research, and well sourced with relevant links.

 

I also really appreciate the transparency of the links at the end of the card stacks/articles that explain how/why the articles have changed over time. That's a breath of fresh air when compared to how a propaganda network disappears a story when the facts become inconvenient.

[Hingle McCringleberry]

Just read the Benghazi cards. Very well done, seems to be about as down the middle as you can get. Also lots of little details that either got left out or filtered out by me after the attacks (such as the distance a team would of needed to travel to get there to help). The fact they have gone back and embedded the new "smoking gun" from the emails on the 30th is really nice.

 

Thanks for the tip

[JJ Husker]

I kind of like this Vox site. It seems like they're actually trying to inform and educate you rather than spinning the story toward some predetermined agenda. Like it a lot so far.

[BigRedBuster]

One improvement I can see is having the ability to search the site for articles. If there is one, I don' see it.

[carlfense]

One improvement I can see is having the ability to search the site for articles. If there is one, I don' see it.

I think that they had a piece about that a couple weeks ago. The gist of it was that a search function is being developed but it wasn't a priority at the launch.

 

In the meantime, they recommended using a search engine like google to find articles by putting a keyword in front of vox. For example searching for "vaccines vox".

[EbylHusker]

Vox is a good site, I've been following them since launch. The main thrust of providing explanations for current topics, rather than just reeling off daily updates without much attempt to explain the history and background, is a good one.

 

Also, if you're going to use Google to search a site, this will work best...

 

vaccines site:vox.com

 

That's how you specify that you only want results from the given internet site.

[tschu]

Here's a good one, a card set on Genetically Modified Foods

 

Might help dispel a bunch of false assumptions and disinformation that's out there (GM food isn't safe! blah blah blah!) but at the same time will open peoples' eyes to the real problems (well, mainly Monsanto, patenting, and broadening use of herbicides)

[BigRedBuster]

Here's a good one, a card set on Genetically Modified Foods

 

Might help dispel a bunch of false assumptions and disinformation that's out there (GM food isn't safe! blah blah blah!) but at the same time will open peoples' eyes to the real problems (well, mainly Monsanto, patenting, and broadening use of herbicides)

 

I read that the other day and it's a good article. I don't have the fear mongering attitude towards Monsanto that some do and I don't really care about the patenting.

 

The herbicides is something to watch but at the same time, it has allowed for less chemicals overall being put on crops which is a good thing. Roundup is a very safe herbicide compared to others so not too worried about that either.

 

The fear mongering of the GM foods not being safe is a hoax that hopefully more people will educate themselves on.

[tschu]

Yeah. I mean in a vacuum Monsanto is not a problem, but the fact that they are now effectively a monopoly which can strong-arm farmers and other members of the industry and the fact that patenting a living thing is an enormous gray area/pandora's box situation creates a lot of economic and legal headaches. Patenting a genetic modified organism is some strange territory, and I don't think it's necessarily wrong, but I think it should operate under a different set of regulations than any other patents. Plus, Monsanto tends to be really dickish for no reason and does things like suing farmers who have had their fields accidentally contaminated with their patented plants, like if seeds were carried by the wind from the neighbor's Monsanto field. There's no place for that.

 

As for the actual genetic modification, as long as the proper research is carried out, there is nothing to suggest that it isn't safe. I'm sure you could bioengineer something dangerous, but you can also walk into a Target and an ammunition shop and buy gunpowder and a pressure cooker. It's not really a pressing concern.

[strigori]

There is not enough of a timeline on the GMO crops to know exactly what outcomes could arise. The linked article in there with a group of scientists saying exactly that have a very good point. Its entirely possible the effects could not be seen for a generation or two. And there has been a timeline correlation between the advent of GMO foods, and autism. No rock solid link yet, just corollary.

 

 

Along the lines of Vox, its worth checking out the show Vice on HBO. News stories that not many are really covering, and not just window dressing.

[Husker_x]

I checked it out and besides the annoying yellow color scheme, it's pretty cool. Simple layout. Not much in the commentary department. And unlike Drudge and its sister site he Huffington Post, there's not near as much sensational BS everywhere. To visit HuffPo you need a bigger screen some days to fit in all that bolded, red, italic text.

[sd'sker]

huffpo has become unbearable. it is like a bad mix of buzzfeed, tmz, and cosmo. only 25%, at most, of it is worth reading and informative.

[tschu]

There is not enough of a timeline on the GMO crops to know exactly what outcomes could arise. The linked article in there with a group of scientists saying exactly that have a very good point. Its entirely possible the effects could not be seen for a generation or two. And there has been a timeline correlation between the advent of GMO foods, and autism. No rock solid link yet, just corollary.

 

 

Along the lines of Vox, its worth checking out the show Vice on HBO. News stories that not many are really covering, and not just window dressing.

It's not like we're so clueless about how genetics work that we don't know what's going to happen in a couple of generations. Trust me on this one.