Always the Last to Know

“Should Ezra Klein quit The Washington Post? Ben Domenech says it might be smart,” Matt Lewis writes at the Daily Caller:

Ezra Klein of the Washington Post is a prime example of a writer who could go out on his own and potentially make more money, says Domenech. “Certainly he needed [The Washington Post] to build the brand that he has, but [if] he decides to walk away and start his own entity, I expect that a lot of people would follow him in terms of the content that he produces…”

Klein has over 350,000 Twitter followers and over 174,000 Facebook “likes.”

So there is an opportunity for writers to go out on their own. But Domenech warns that not everyone is cut out this. For example, he notes that if Charles Krauthammer and George Will had to worry about growing an email list or making sure web vendors were paid, they would have less time to actually focus on writing columns.

Despite the drawbacks, this seems to be a route more and more writers are willing to try. In just the last year, we’ve seen bloggers like Andrew Sullivan (formerly of the Daily Beast/Newsweek) and David Catanese (formerly of Politico) go out on their own — and remain relevant.

Certainly, if a journalist such as Ezra Klein were to join them, he’d have his own group of followers from social media to support him in his endeavors.

With a little help — or at the least some less-than-benign neglect — from the Washington Post, doesn’t he have a pretty loyal underground following already?