The limits of the Wonkosphere.

• Author: Glastris, Paul
• Position: Editor's Note

Are we entering a golden age of policy journalism? Consider the evidence. Ezra Klein, founder of the Washington Post's phenomenally successful online policy news site Wonkblog, recently left to form what he says will be an even more revolutionary digital venture in explanatory policy journalism. The Post says it will not only continue but beef up Wonkblog while adding a new site headed by journalist Jim Tankersley that will use narrative reporting to illuminate economic data. Meanwhile, the New York Times is set to launch a wonky politics and policy site overseen by ace economics writer David Leonhardt.

Up until the last decade or so, there really weren't "policy journalists" per se, outside the rarified pages of magazines like the Washington Monthly. In mainstream outlets, the political reporters, the stars of most newsrooms, wrote some about policy, but only as it related to the horse race. They were oddsmakers (will such-and-such bill pass the Senate?), not explainers or evaluators (how well do experts think the bill's specific provisions will work in practice?). The task of following the details of policy was relegated to a second group, beat reporters who covered certain agencies and issues. The best of these (think the New York Times's Robert Pear's health care coverage) had encyclopedic knowledge of their issues and sources deep in the bureaucracy. They won awards and enjoyed a certain amount of respect in newsrooms. But they were not celebrities. They did not get invited on TV to share their opinions. And they did not write much about the political dimensions of the issues they covered.

Then, in the early 2000s, George W. Bush came to power in a highly contested election at just about the time blogging technology was becoming widely available. As a result, thousands of amateur left-of-center citizens started writing about politics, mostly with the aim of figuring out how to beat Republicans in elections. Some of these bloggers took a deeper interest in explaining and exposing the Bush administration's policies (on tax cuts, the Iraq War, etc.), and a handful of them got very good at it--Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall led the way, quickly followed by people like Matt Yglesias. But unlike in the mainstream publications, where policy and politics were kept separate, in these writers the subjects were fused.

Their growing audiences showed that there was an untapped market for this kind of politically savvy, on-the-news policy writing...