Plenty of people could write as well as David Pogue, Nate Silver, Ezra Klein, etc., but the expectation is that those writers will bring the audience. They get

Plenty of people could write as well as David Pogue, Nate Silver, Ezra Klein, etc., but the expectation is that those writers will bring the audience. They get seven figure salaries not because they can write articles really well, but that they can bring an audience wherever they go and create revenue worth what they're getting paid