Conservatives and liberals are hating on Ezra Klein's Vox

While it's still in its early days, Ezra Klein's much-hyped new site dedicated to explanatory journalism has already attracted a whole lot of mockery, in some cases for jaw-droppingly elementary question-and-answer items like "What is marijuana?" and "Who is Gwyneth Paltrow?"

And criticism is not just coming from the right, where conservatives are dinging the site for Matthew Yglesias declaring the national debt to be about $5 trillion less than it is — or Klein's insistence that HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius' decision to resign was proof ObamaCare had won. Liberals are on Vox's case, too.

A few weeks ago, liberals were upset when Klein hired what some described as a self-hating gay journalist. Now, the assistant managing editor of the left-leaning Pro Publica is accusing the outlet of lifting content.

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The hits just keep on coming. To be sure, a certain amount of controversy is good publicity. But one gets the impression there are a lot of people out there rooting for Klein's experiment to fail.