Klein, who led The Washington Post's public policy blog, Wonkblog, left to join Vox Media in January after he failed to secure funding from the newspaper's editors for a new site.
After several weeks of preparation and recruiting journalists, Klein and Vox Media released last month more details on their plans for Vox.com, promising readers news stories packaged with contextual information and graphics. The site's mission is to make news more digestible by roasting it "to perfection with a drizzle of olive oil and hint of sea salt," Klein said.
Vox.com's editors acknowledged Sunday that the site is still a work in progress with several missing features, including a menu bar, commenting features and fancy data graphics it eventually wants to publish. But operating the site in real time was a better way to test the audience's preference, according to a blog entry Sunday by Klein and the site's executive editors, Melissa Bell and Matthew Yglesias.
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"Our theory is simple: the quicker we can launch, the quicker we can start learning — and start improving," they wrote. "The site we have today isn't perfect, and it isn't anywhere near complete — not editorially, and not technologically."
Vox.com joins a crowded field of data-driven news sites that aim to incorporate more analysis, statistics and graphics in their content.
Backed by ESPN, Nate Silver, the journalist known for his accurate prediction of President Obama's victory in the 2012 election, launched FiveThirtyEight.com last month.
The New York Times, The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal have similar plans.
Vox Media started in 2003 as a sports b! log, AthleticsNation.com, written by Tyler Bleszinski, a former Orange County Register reporter. With traffic growing quickly, professional managers took over the site, rolled it into a broader corporate umbrella of SB Nation in 2009 and added more sports blogs.
Vox Media also owns technology news site TheVerge.com and a video gaming site, Polygon.com.
In late 2013, Vox Media raised about $40 million from investors to expand into other topics. Shortly after the deal, the Washington, D.C.-based company bought Curbed Network's news and blog sites -- Curbed.com, Eater.com and Racked.com -- that cover the real estate, food and shopping scenes in large U.S. cities.
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