1
00:00:10,119 --> 00:00:14,280
Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast.

2
00:00:14,360 --> 00:00:16,680
Speaker 2: I'm Geo Wisenthal and I'm Tracy Alloway.

3
00:00:17,239 --> 00:00:19,919
Speaker 1: Tracy, there's been a lot of media news and it's

4
00:00:19,920 --> 00:00:22,880
Speaker 1: a cliche and I'm sure it's been repeated over and

5
00:00:22,920 --> 00:00:25,040
Speaker 1: over again in headlines, but we're at like the end

6
00:00:25,079 --> 00:00:27,440
Speaker 1: of an era, for like the era of journalism that

7
00:00:27,480 --> 00:00:28,600
Speaker 1: we both came up in.

8
00:00:28,960 --> 00:00:31,440
Speaker 2: I feel like before we start this episode, we should

9
00:00:31,520 --> 00:00:34,720
Speaker 2: just get the disclaimer out right away, which is this

10
00:00:34,760 --> 00:00:38,920
Speaker 2: is probably going to be our most navel gazing episode ever.

11
00:00:39,360 --> 00:00:41,839
Speaker 1: Yes, and I think we're even planning on releasing this

12
00:00:41,960 --> 00:00:44,920
Speaker 1: it's like a Friday bonus episode or the week just

13
00:00:44,960 --> 00:00:47,479
Speaker 1: to acknowledge that. It's like, Okay, if you don't want

14
00:00:47,479 --> 00:00:50,680
Speaker 1: to know anything about the media business or Joe and

15
00:00:50,720 --> 00:00:52,879
Speaker 1: Tracy are all these things that are sort of like

16
00:00:53,200 --> 00:00:55,960
Speaker 1: endemic to their lives over the last decade, feel free

17
00:00:56,040 --> 00:00:57,320
Speaker 1: to skip this one.

18
00:00:57,440 --> 00:00:59,920
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is media talking about the media. But you

19
00:01:00,120 --> 00:01:04,759
Speaker 2: are right. There have been some things that happened happening lately. Specifically,

20
00:01:04,800 --> 00:01:08,160
Speaker 2: we've seen BuzzFeed News announcing that it will be shutting down.

21
00:01:08,440 --> 00:01:12,080
Speaker 2: I think there was a report recently about Vice Media

22
00:01:12,120 --> 00:01:16,080
Speaker 2: potentially filing for bankruptcy. It feels like the end of

23
00:01:16,120 --> 00:01:20,800
Speaker 2: an era for a lot of these digital focused media startups.

24
00:01:21,360 --> 00:01:23,960
Speaker 1: No, I mean, it's definitely true. And you know, as

25
00:01:24,200 --> 00:01:28,120
Speaker 1: listeners do know, we both started our careers sort of

26
00:01:28,240 --> 00:01:32,680
Speaker 1: in digital basically roughly the same time, basically right at

27
00:01:32,720 --> 00:01:35,319
Speaker 1: the worst of the Great Financial Crisis, And out of

28
00:01:35,360 --> 00:01:39,520
Speaker 1: this period came all of these new experiments and you know,

29
00:01:39,720 --> 00:01:43,280
Speaker 1: upstart media companies that were supposed to dislodge the incumbent.

30
00:01:43,920 --> 00:01:46,440
Speaker 1: You know, the blog at FT.

31
00:01:45,920 --> 00:01:48,040
Speaker 2: Every Financial Times, Alphaville, yep.

32
00:01:48,000 --> 00:01:51,720
Speaker 1: I was an insider and insiders still chugging. They recently

33
00:01:51,960 --> 00:01:54,480
Speaker 1: they did announce laoffs. But of all of the companies,

34
00:01:54,560 --> 00:01:56,400
Speaker 1: maybe we'll talk about this, of all of the companies,

35
00:01:56,440 --> 00:01:58,440
Speaker 1: I kind of feel like they're like the winner that

36
00:01:58,480 --> 00:02:00,160
Speaker 1: nobody talks about in the I.

37
00:02:00,120 --> 00:02:03,480
Speaker 2: Also call it insider and not its original name. Have

38
00:02:03,560 --> 00:02:05,320
Speaker 2: you just erace that from your mind?

39
00:02:05,440 --> 00:02:07,160
Speaker 1: Do you know what the original name was?

40
00:02:07,160 --> 00:02:10,519
Speaker 2: Was it not cluster stock? It was, yeah, Oka cluster stock.

41
00:02:10,560 --> 00:02:13,000
Speaker 1: Because everyone's like our business insider but with names even

42
00:02:13,080 --> 00:02:16,280
Speaker 1: before then, and even before then was still a Connelly insider. Anyway,

43
00:02:17,000 --> 00:02:19,600
Speaker 1: it's a pretty pivotal time, and you know, I guess

44
00:02:19,600 --> 00:02:23,200
Speaker 1: the question for was this all is phenomenon or was

45
00:02:23,240 --> 00:02:25,519
Speaker 1: this something else? Or like what was going on there?

46
00:02:25,720 --> 00:02:27,720
Speaker 2: Well, I think there is an overlap with some of

47
00:02:27,720 --> 00:02:29,720
Speaker 2: the bigger you know, I might be reaching here, but

48
00:02:29,760 --> 00:02:31,079
Speaker 2: I think there is an overlap with some of the

49
00:02:31,120 --> 00:02:34,320
Speaker 2: bigger themes we've been talking about recently, which is I

50
00:02:34,320 --> 00:02:38,200
Speaker 2: guess the sort of attrition of tech or the tech

51
00:02:38,280 --> 00:02:41,400
Speaker 2: strains that we've seen. And the thing that digital media

52
00:02:41,440 --> 00:02:43,960
Speaker 2: has in common with a lot of the tech industry

53
00:02:44,120 --> 00:02:47,400
Speaker 2: has to be venture capital financing. It has to be

54
00:02:47,639 --> 00:02:50,880
Speaker 2: there was a story about what was going to happen

55
00:02:51,120 --> 00:02:54,320
Speaker 2: in the digital media market. You know, people talked about

56
00:02:54,320 --> 00:02:58,560
Speaker 2: these big numbers, huge audiences that could now be reached

57
00:02:58,720 --> 00:03:01,720
Speaker 2: through online pop. So it feels like there is some

58
00:03:01,840 --> 00:03:02,640
Speaker 2: overlap there.

59
00:03:02,919 --> 00:03:04,520
Speaker 1: Yeah, And of course, you know, and I was a

60
00:03:04,560 --> 00:03:08,560
Speaker 1: business insider, like there was a really intense pressure month

61
00:03:08,600 --> 00:03:12,360
Speaker 1: after month to hit new traffic goals. And part of

62
00:03:12,400 --> 00:03:14,760
Speaker 1: that was like clearly like ad sales right there, like

63
00:03:14,800 --> 00:03:17,560
Speaker 1: sort of on some level of function of traffic. But

64
00:03:17,680 --> 00:03:20,560
Speaker 1: I think the other thing is they're a function of

65
00:03:20,720 --> 00:03:23,640
Speaker 1: telling a story to your investors, yes for your next round.

66
00:03:23,760 --> 00:03:25,440
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have lots of lines going up.

67
00:03:25,440 --> 00:03:27,799
Speaker 1: Lots of lines, and so regardless of whether you're actually

68
00:03:27,800 --> 00:03:30,080
Speaker 1: profitable or not at any given moment, if the lines

69
00:03:30,120 --> 00:03:32,080
Speaker 1: are up, you can live because you can get that

70
00:03:32,160 --> 00:03:33,320
Speaker 1: next round of funding into.

71
00:03:33,160 --> 00:03:35,160
Speaker 2: The classic tech growth exactly.

72
00:03:35,800 --> 00:03:38,240
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to talk all about this because we're

73
00:03:38,280 --> 00:03:40,360
Speaker 1: going to be speaking with Ben Smith. He is the

74
00:03:40,480 --> 00:03:44,040
Speaker 1: editor in chief and co founder of Semaphore, previously as

75
00:03:44,040 --> 00:03:47,120
Speaker 1: a media columnist at The New York Times, and previous

76
00:03:47,160 --> 00:03:49,440
Speaker 1: to that, he was the editor in chief at the

77
00:03:49,480 --> 00:03:52,520
Speaker 1: aforementioned BuzzFeed News, which changed the world. And he's the

78
00:03:52,560 --> 00:03:56,800
Speaker 1: author of the new book Traffic Genius, Rivalry and The

79
00:03:56,840 --> 00:03:59,120
Speaker 1: Billion Dollar Race to Go Viral. So, Ben, thank you

80
00:03:59,160 --> 00:04:00,160
Speaker 1: so much for coming on.

81
00:04:00,760 --> 00:04:02,560
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me. And I should

82
00:04:02,560 --> 00:04:05,200
Speaker 3: say like, as a genuine fan and listener of the show,

83
00:04:05,480 --> 00:04:07,360
Speaker 3: I can't imagine that anybody does not want to know

84
00:04:07,400 --> 00:04:09,360
Speaker 3: all the details of your lives. I certainly do.

85
00:04:10,400 --> 00:04:13,080
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for saying that on air. I

86
00:04:13,120 --> 00:04:16,800
Speaker 1: have a question, which is why did BuzzFeed News exist?

87
00:04:16,960 --> 00:04:20,040
Speaker 1: And the reason I asked specifically is that in my mind,

88
00:04:20,560 --> 00:04:23,680
Speaker 1: as a competitor to it, when I was an insider

89
00:04:23,720 --> 00:04:28,479
Speaker 1: for several years, my perception was that BuzzFeed itself was

90
00:04:28,520 --> 00:04:32,359
Speaker 1: this huge traffic monster, cultural juggernaut. Everyone knows about the quizzes,

91
00:04:32,360 --> 00:04:37,200
Speaker 1: et cetera, and that BuzzFeed news was there to raise

92
00:04:37,240 --> 00:04:40,560
Speaker 1: the prestige of the brand maybe for advertisers. Is that correct?

93
00:04:40,600 --> 00:04:41,600
Speaker 1: Like why did it exist?

94
00:04:42,160 --> 00:04:44,240
Speaker 3: So that's partially correct, but I think you have to

95
00:04:44,240 --> 00:04:46,840
Speaker 3: put your head back to twenty eleven, twenty twelve when

96
00:04:46,880 --> 00:04:49,960
Speaker 3: we started it, when the kind of thesis that we

97
00:04:49,960 --> 00:04:52,680
Speaker 3: were working on was that in part that the Facebook

98
00:04:52,680 --> 00:04:55,760
Speaker 3: news feed was this central pillar of society and people

99
00:04:55,800 --> 00:04:59,880
Speaker 3: loved it. People loved the idea that quizzes, that meme,

100
00:05:00,320 --> 00:05:03,400
Speaker 3: that baby pictures from your friends were all mixed up together.

101
00:05:03,920 --> 00:05:06,320
Speaker 3: And at BuzzFeed, among other things, they'd noticed that on

102
00:05:06,480 --> 00:05:10,039
Speaker 3: big news days their traffic went down, and so both

103
00:05:10,200 --> 00:05:12,760
Speaker 3: you know, and so both kind of in a functional sense,

104
00:05:12,800 --> 00:05:15,120
Speaker 3: that was part of this mix that again that people

105
00:05:15,240 --> 00:05:17,160
Speaker 3: liked that this stuff was all mixed together, and so

106
00:05:17,520 --> 00:05:19,360
Speaker 3: it was part of the mix that I think Jonah

107
00:05:19,360 --> 00:05:23,200
Speaker 3: and the Peretti, the founder thought people wanted. But also

108
00:05:23,320 --> 00:05:25,880
Speaker 3: BuzzFeed was you say it was a cultural juggernaut, but

109
00:05:25,960 --> 00:05:28,960
Speaker 3: actually it was struggling for relevance. It was part it

110
00:05:29,000 --> 00:05:32,240
Speaker 3: was halfway to feel this being seen by advertisers and

111
00:05:32,279 --> 00:05:34,920
Speaker 3: by the platforms and by everybody else as a media company,

112
00:05:35,279 --> 00:05:38,200
Speaker 3: halfway to being seen as being like nine Gag or

113
00:05:38,240 --> 00:05:42,720
Speaker 3: like break dot com, or like a generation of you know, cheeseburger,

114
00:05:42,760 --> 00:05:45,760
Speaker 3: a generation of an earlier generation of essentially meme sites

115
00:05:45,800 --> 00:05:48,480
Speaker 3: that got wiped out in that era because the platforms

116
00:05:48,800 --> 00:05:49,919
Speaker 3: consider them spam.

117
00:05:49,960 --> 00:05:52,320
Speaker 2: Well, I was going to ask how much did the

118
00:05:52,560 --> 00:05:57,280
Speaker 2: content mix become a problem for BuzzFeed overall because it

119
00:05:57,360 --> 00:06:00,200
Speaker 2: was trying to do something kind of unusual in the

120
00:06:00,240 --> 00:06:03,600
Speaker 2: sense that it was trying to do very important, sometimes

121
00:06:03,640 --> 00:06:08,159
Speaker 2: investigative journalism, you know, hard news, while at the same

122
00:06:08,240 --> 00:06:13,000
Speaker 2: time publishing memes and you know, like ten of the

123
00:06:13,000 --> 00:06:16,040
Speaker 2: best random products you can buy off of Amazon kind

124
00:06:16,080 --> 00:06:16,760
Speaker 2: of lists.

125
00:06:17,160 --> 00:06:19,360
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. In this moment of which, again, this

126
00:06:19,520 --> 00:06:22,839
Speaker 3: very kind of optimistic and fresh moment of social media

127
00:06:23,000 --> 00:06:27,160
Speaker 3: in twenty twelve, it seemed plausible that people liked the mix,

128
00:06:27,240 --> 00:06:29,840
Speaker 3: the consumers liked the mix actually, and that the same

129
00:06:29,880 --> 00:06:32,200
Speaker 3: people who liked memes wanted to get hard news and

130
00:06:32,200 --> 00:06:33,919
Speaker 3: wanted to get them in the same place, which was

131
00:06:33,960 --> 00:06:37,760
Speaker 3: to say, Facebook slash BuzzFeed. I think as you suggest

132
00:06:37,800 --> 00:06:40,799
Speaker 3: in the question that really starts to change, like news

133
00:06:40,839 --> 00:06:43,440
Speaker 3: got less fun as the decade war on, not from

134
00:06:43,440 --> 00:06:46,200
Speaker 3: some technical perspective, but because in fact, like there was

135
00:06:46,240 --> 00:06:49,560
Speaker 3: this huge rise of right wing populism, of left wing populism,

136
00:06:49,600 --> 00:06:53,599
Speaker 3: of super confrontational public politics playing out through people screaming

137
00:06:53,600 --> 00:06:56,120
Speaker 3: at each other on social media, and suddenly this idea

138
00:06:56,160 --> 00:06:58,920
Speaker 3: that the Facebook feed is this delightful mix of all

139
00:06:58,960 --> 00:07:01,479
Speaker 3: these different things kind of curdled. And I think that

140
00:07:01,560 --> 00:07:03,760
Speaker 3: was a huge problem for us that we never totally

141
00:07:03,760 --> 00:07:05,120
Speaker 3: found our way out of right.

142
00:07:05,240 --> 00:07:08,640
Speaker 2: So you had this like weird mix of maybe the

143
00:07:08,760 --> 00:07:12,880
Speaker 2: ultra right talking about fascism and then like ten clap

144
00:07:12,960 --> 00:07:15,720
Speaker 2: back tweets that you've never seen before, and they kind

145
00:07:15,760 --> 00:07:17,720
Speaker 2: of sit badly alongside each other.

146
00:07:17,800 --> 00:07:20,360
Speaker 3: Well, no more. You have a list of like, you know,

147
00:07:20,520 --> 00:07:22,560
Speaker 3: things you only knew if you grew up Persian in

148
00:07:22,640 --> 00:07:25,800
Speaker 3: New Jersey and a bunch of cute cats and a

149
00:07:25,800 --> 00:07:28,400
Speaker 3: story about Donald Trump, and the reactions to that story

150
00:07:28,400 --> 00:07:31,559
Speaker 3: about Donald Trump are totally polarized. So I see, okay,

151
00:07:31,800 --> 00:07:34,320
Speaker 3: and yeah, and maybe you know and maybe the there's

152
00:07:34,360 --> 00:07:37,360
Speaker 3: always a huge brand problem in question that like BuzzFeed news,

153
00:07:37,400 --> 00:07:39,520
Speaker 3: it's like calling something like I don't know, Disney News

154
00:07:39,600 --> 00:07:42,120
Speaker 3: or something like, it's a weird brand, but there was

155
00:07:42,160 --> 00:07:44,800
Speaker 3: a window in which we leaned into it and people

156
00:07:44,920 --> 00:07:48,520
Speaker 3: liked it, and then I think the broader social forces

157
00:07:48,600 --> 00:07:50,560
Speaker 3: changed and turned against that. None of this speaks to

158
00:07:50,600 --> 00:07:53,320
Speaker 3: the business model or anything else, but that was that

159
00:07:53,400 --> 00:07:55,640
Speaker 3: was a real you could feel as Trump rose, you

160
00:07:55,640 --> 00:07:57,800
Speaker 3: could kind of feel the weather change and feel that

161
00:07:57,920 --> 00:07:59,559
Speaker 3: brand get worse.

162
00:08:00,240 --> 00:08:03,360
Speaker 1: Well, man, there's a lot there. I hadn't really thought

163
00:08:03,360 --> 00:08:08,040
Speaker 1: about that element though, that Like, basically, people just got

164
00:08:08,080 --> 00:08:11,360
Speaker 1: angrier with each other, you know, at the end of

165
00:08:11,400 --> 00:08:13,200
Speaker 1: the twenty tens than they were at the beginning of

166
00:08:13,200 --> 00:08:13,480
Speaker 1: the twenty.

167
00:08:13,560 --> 00:08:15,480
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that's the story of Facebook and

168
00:08:15,520 --> 00:08:18,240
Speaker 3: BuzzFeed was the end of Twitter and BuzzFeed was a

169
00:08:18,280 --> 00:08:22,040
Speaker 3: big bat on news being distributed by social media. You know.

170
00:08:22,240 --> 00:08:25,560
Speaker 1: Just on this brand question though, that we can sort

171
00:08:25,600 --> 00:08:27,880
Speaker 1: of pivot. You know. When I was an insider, I

172
00:08:27,920 --> 00:08:30,320
Speaker 1: always sort of felt this sort of like, you know,

173
00:08:30,480 --> 00:08:35,200
Speaker 1: my boss then Henry Blodgett again winner of this whole

174
00:08:35,240 --> 00:08:39,400
Speaker 1: era in my opinion, and completely brilliant media executive. But

175
00:08:39,480 --> 00:08:42,920
Speaker 1: I also sort of felt like this, like, well, I mean,

176
00:08:42,920 --> 00:08:46,760
Speaker 1: I guess the question is like to some extent, if

177
00:08:46,800 --> 00:08:49,000
Speaker 1: you're like going up against the New York Times or

178
00:08:49,000 --> 00:08:52,440
Speaker 1: the Washington Post or Bloomberg News, et cetera. Does the

179
00:08:52,559 --> 00:08:56,040
Speaker 1: existence of the sort of like meme side of the

180
00:08:56,120 --> 00:09:00,480
Speaker 1: operation create some sort of like hard care app in

181
00:09:00,559 --> 00:09:03,400
Speaker 1: terms of really how far you can go with like prestige.

182
00:09:03,880 --> 00:09:06,000
Speaker 1: I mean, because I got the sense that insider that

183
00:09:06,080 --> 00:09:09,800
Speaker 1: on some level that you could like get win Coolitzers

184
00:09:09,840 --> 00:09:12,240
Speaker 1: and do great work, et cetera, but on some level

185
00:09:12,880 --> 00:09:14,520
Speaker 1: you kind of have to pick one or the other.

186
00:09:15,720 --> 00:09:17,319
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think that there

187
00:09:17,400 --> 00:09:19,560
Speaker 3: was a path for BuzzFeed where at its best, maybe

188
00:09:19,600 --> 00:09:22,400
Speaker 3: I'm somebody who I actually like think prestige is overrated

189
00:09:22,760 --> 00:09:25,160
Speaker 3: and sometimes kind of productive, but there's you know, there

190
00:09:25,200 --> 00:09:27,920
Speaker 3: was journalism you could do that was that particularly focused

191
00:09:27,960 --> 00:09:32,040
Speaker 3: on stuff that the majority young women who were sharing

192
00:09:32,120 --> 00:09:34,600
Speaker 3: memes cared about a lot, which could be like sexual

193
00:09:34,679 --> 00:09:37,640
Speaker 3: assault at massage. Envy for instance, was something we wrote about.

194
00:09:37,640 --> 00:09:39,920
Speaker 3: I think at our best we were like a lot

195
00:09:39,960 --> 00:09:43,320
Speaker 3: of the coverage, you know, was in sync with the

196
00:09:43,360 --> 00:09:45,600
Speaker 3: people who were reading the site and was really hard

197
00:09:45,640 --> 00:09:50,520
Speaker 3: hitting journalism that also overlapped with the interests of regular

198
00:09:50,520 --> 00:09:51,520
Speaker 3: people reading buzzfed.

199
00:10:08,760 --> 00:10:10,880
Speaker 2: Talk to us about how we I mean, the book

200
00:10:10,960 --> 00:10:13,280
Speaker 2: is called Traffic, so I assume you have a lot

201
00:10:13,280 --> 00:10:16,400
Speaker 2: of opinions on the importance of traffic and how it works.

202
00:10:16,720 --> 00:10:20,440
Speaker 2: But talk to us, maybe specifically about how that fed,

203
00:10:20,520 --> 00:10:22,960
Speaker 2: you know, the lines going up on the chart, how

204
00:10:23,160 --> 00:10:27,400
Speaker 2: that fed into the business model and shaped the offering.

205
00:10:27,559 --> 00:10:32,959
Speaker 2: How were people thinking about traffic as a monetizable commodity back.

206
00:10:32,800 --> 00:10:35,000
Speaker 3: Then, Yeah, and I asked, And you know, I spent

207
00:10:35,040 --> 00:10:36,880
Speaker 3: a lot of time in the book, and a lot

208
00:10:36,880 --> 00:10:39,719
Speaker 3: of the reporting of the book, for me, particularly was

209
00:10:39,760 --> 00:10:41,760
Speaker 3: on the stuff that happened before I got there, which

210
00:10:41,760 --> 00:10:44,480
Speaker 3: is to say, kind of the discovery of traffic in

211
00:10:44,520 --> 00:10:47,959
Speaker 3: the mid offts by the folks at you your team

212
00:10:48,000 --> 00:10:50,320
Speaker 3: at Insider a little bit later, but early on, by

213
00:10:50,400 --> 00:10:52,880
Speaker 3: Jonah Pieretti who was then at Huffington Post and Nick

214
00:10:52,960 --> 00:10:56,040
Speaker 3: Detton at Gocker. And It's interesting to use the word commodity,

215
00:10:56,080 --> 00:10:58,240
Speaker 3: because they really did think it was a commodity. It

216
00:10:58,320 --> 00:11:01,320
Speaker 3: was something where they could, you know, for every individual

217
00:11:01,400 --> 00:11:03,720
Speaker 3: who clicked on their sites, they could get something like

218
00:11:03,760 --> 00:11:06,640
Speaker 3: a nine dollars CPM, which is a pretty good rate

219
00:11:06,760 --> 00:11:08,560
Speaker 3: then and sadly now, and.

220
00:11:08,600 --> 00:11:12,480
Speaker 1: They had CPM is per thousand costs for nine dollars

221
00:11:12,520 --> 00:11:13,640
Speaker 1: for a thousand clicks.

222
00:11:13,400 --> 00:11:15,920
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, And they had I think every reason to

223
00:11:16,040 --> 00:11:19,760
Speaker 3: think that. Wow, Like, at this very rudimentary stage of

224
00:11:19,760 --> 00:11:22,560
Speaker 3: this business, we're getting nine dollars for a really crappy product.

225
00:11:22,559 --> 00:11:24,280
Speaker 3: We're going to make that product way better and we're

226
00:11:24,320 --> 00:11:26,400
Speaker 3: going to scale it a lot more. And if this

227
00:11:26,520 --> 00:11:28,880
Speaker 3: is a classic commodity, we're going to make an enormous

228
00:11:28,920 --> 00:11:31,079
Speaker 3: amount of money. And so they're folks on trafficking the

229
00:11:31,120 --> 00:11:34,000
Speaker 3: different theories about it. Denton, who started Gawker, had this

230
00:11:34,280 --> 00:11:37,600
Speaker 3: very both very ideological guys actually had this theory that

231
00:11:37,679 --> 00:11:39,440
Speaker 3: traffic is really to be found in kind of like

232
00:11:39,559 --> 00:11:43,840
Speaker 3: ripping the mask off of society's hypocrisy, of your own hypocrisy.

233
00:11:44,280 --> 00:11:47,120
Speaker 3: If your audience wants pornography, give them pornography. If they

234
00:11:47,160 --> 00:11:49,839
Speaker 3: want sort of malicious stuffs that give them that it

235
00:11:49,960 --> 00:11:54,040
Speaker 3: was actual important a flash spot. But also if they

236
00:11:54,040 --> 00:11:56,720
Speaker 3: wanted sort of stuff that appealed to their worst instincts,

237
00:11:56,720 --> 00:11:58,760
Speaker 3: give them that, don't make them pretend to be better.

238
00:11:59,080 --> 00:12:02,319
Speaker 3: And then also of rip the mask of traditional journalism

239
00:12:02,320 --> 00:12:05,840
Speaker 3: and print the stuff, the sort of mean, sometimes gossipy

240
00:12:05,880 --> 00:12:08,719
Speaker 3: stuff or sometimes true hard truths the journalists say to

241
00:12:08,800 --> 00:12:11,040
Speaker 3: each other at a bar but don't print. So that's

242
00:12:11,120 --> 00:12:14,640
Speaker 3: one theory. Jonah's theory was totally different. He saw this

243
00:12:14,760 --> 00:12:17,640
Speaker 3: kind of just the bubbling of this social media world

244
00:12:18,080 --> 00:12:21,480
Speaker 3: and the theory that we had a buzz Steed, founder

245
00:12:21,520 --> 00:12:23,720
Speaker 3: of puffing the post and then a BuzzFeed. And what

246
00:12:23,800 --> 00:12:26,000
Speaker 3: he saw in this social media world, which also was

247
00:12:26,040 --> 00:12:28,080
Speaker 3: true for a time, was that the stuff that people

248
00:12:28,120 --> 00:12:31,200
Speaker 3: would share tended to be very positive, Like, you weren't

249
00:12:31,200 --> 00:12:33,920
Speaker 3: going to go out and I mean, God forbid share insane,

250
00:12:33,960 --> 00:12:36,040
Speaker 3: screamy politics because that would make you look like a

251
00:12:36,040 --> 00:12:38,720
Speaker 3: crazy person. No one would do that. What you would

252
00:12:38,720 --> 00:12:43,200
Speaker 3: share on Facebook was, you know, fundraisers for earthquake victims

253
00:12:43,360 --> 00:12:46,680
Speaker 3: or lists of cute cats. And so he sort of

254
00:12:46,720 --> 00:12:50,400
Speaker 3: what he built was around an idea at first that

255
00:12:50,440 --> 00:12:53,720
Speaker 3: people were going to be distributing media themselves hand to

256
00:12:53,760 --> 00:12:56,040
Speaker 3: hand and doing it in a way that reflected their

257
00:12:56,080 --> 00:13:01,280
Speaker 3: best selves. So they're very different tactical ideological approaches to

258
00:13:01,320 --> 00:13:01,840
Speaker 3: the Internet.

259
00:13:02,040 --> 00:13:04,360
Speaker 2: This is actually something that I wanted to ask you about,

260
00:13:04,400 --> 00:13:07,400
Speaker 2: which is it feels like the way people thought about

261
00:13:07,480 --> 00:13:11,200
Speaker 2: traffic is it's always good eyeballs are always good, but

262
00:13:11,280 --> 00:13:13,600
Speaker 2: it sort of ignores. It feels to me today like

263
00:13:13,679 --> 00:13:16,120
Speaker 2: one way of generating a lot of traffic is through

264
00:13:16,600 --> 00:13:19,480
Speaker 2: the hate read you get. You know, you have something

265
00:13:19,640 --> 00:13:22,679
Speaker 2: saying something provocative, you're still going to get a lot

266
00:13:22,679 --> 00:13:25,280
Speaker 2: of eyeballs on it. But you can't tell whether people

267
00:13:25,320 --> 00:13:27,640
Speaker 2: are reading that because they think it's a valuable piece

268
00:13:27,679 --> 00:13:30,600
Speaker 2: of journalism, or they're reading it because people like to

269
00:13:30,720 --> 00:13:33,880
Speaker 2: read those sort of hate ready, you know, like dog

270
00:13:33,920 --> 00:13:37,599
Speaker 2: whistle type pieces. How like is that something that you

271
00:13:37,679 --> 00:13:38,800
Speaker 2: ever noticed.

272
00:13:39,040 --> 00:13:41,760
Speaker 3: Oh, yes, there's something I ever noticed that people hate it? Yes,

273
00:13:42,679 --> 00:13:44,800
Speaker 3: for sure. And I would say that if you're you know,

274
00:13:45,040 --> 00:13:47,640
Speaker 3: if you are thinking of traffic as a commodity, well

275
00:13:47,640 --> 00:13:50,120
Speaker 3: you're really selling is the space the white space next

276
00:13:50,120 --> 00:13:52,960
Speaker 3: to that article, and so you don't care if people

277
00:13:53,000 --> 00:13:55,200
Speaker 3: love it or hate it, the sort of purest logic

278
00:13:55,240 --> 00:13:57,600
Speaker 3: of traffic, which turned out, by the way, to be

279
00:13:58,000 --> 00:14:00,559
Speaker 3: not how it worked, and I think not how good

280
00:14:00,679 --> 00:14:01,840
Speaker 3: editors ever quite saw it.

281
00:14:02,120 --> 00:14:04,200
Speaker 2: The way I should have phrased the question is like

282
00:14:04,440 --> 00:14:07,800
Speaker 2: did that eventually impact the business model?

283
00:14:08,920 --> 00:14:11,600
Speaker 3: You know, I don't think that It's hard to think

284
00:14:11,600 --> 00:14:14,080
Speaker 3: of a site that really lived on hate read's. I

285
00:14:14,080 --> 00:14:16,640
Speaker 3: mean I'm sure I'm forgetting one. There was something sort

286
00:14:16,640 --> 00:14:17,760
Speaker 3: of similar.

287
00:14:18,240 --> 00:14:20,720
Speaker 2: The marriage announcement section of the New York Times.

288
00:14:21,000 --> 00:14:22,680
Speaker 3: There is that. I mean. There was also the site

289
00:14:22,680 --> 00:14:24,600
Speaker 3: called exojane that.

290
00:14:24,560 --> 00:14:27,560
Speaker 1: Oh, our producer just in the message thought catalog that's

291
00:14:27,600 --> 00:14:27,840
Speaker 1: a good.

292
00:14:27,920 --> 00:14:30,160
Speaker 3: Yes. There was a kind of writing and I actually

293
00:14:31,000 --> 00:14:36,080
Speaker 3: that was basically about having went mostly young women write

294
00:14:36,080 --> 00:14:38,880
Speaker 3: in a totally un self conscious way about their personal

295
00:14:38,960 --> 00:14:42,800
Speaker 3: experiences in a way that was torqued by often by

296
00:14:42,880 --> 00:14:45,520
Speaker 3: kind of sophisticated, cynical editors to make them look like

297
00:14:45,560 --> 00:14:48,440
Speaker 3: horrible people so people would attack them on the Internet.

298
00:14:48,520 --> 00:14:49,800
Speaker 3: I mean, that to me is one of the really

299
00:14:49,840 --> 00:14:52,560
Speaker 3: worst forms of Internet journalism and did like lots of

300
00:14:52,640 --> 00:14:55,720
Speaker 3: damage to these writers in the name of traffic. And

301
00:14:55,920 --> 00:14:58,000
Speaker 3: more broadly, there was it was a kind of I

302
00:14:58,040 --> 00:15:00,480
Speaker 3: think and this came out of Gocker, really came out

303
00:15:00,480 --> 00:15:02,840
Speaker 3: of Jezebel, which you know, I was not a reader

304
00:15:02,880 --> 00:15:04,360
Speaker 3: at the time in two thousand and seven, but was

305
00:15:04,400 --> 00:15:09,280
Speaker 3: this incredibly high impact piece of Internet history that for

306
00:15:09,320 --> 00:15:11,640
Speaker 3: a time I think, if you it's actually kind of

307
00:15:11,680 --> 00:15:13,120
Speaker 3: amazing to look at. You know, they launched inn O

308
00:15:13,240 --> 00:15:15,320
Speaker 3: seven with this. The first thing they do is offer

309
00:15:15,360 --> 00:15:18,720
Speaker 3: a bounty for anybody who can find an unretouched photograph

310
00:15:18,800 --> 00:15:21,800
Speaker 3: from a women's magazine and they get it. They had

311
00:15:21,800 --> 00:15:23,440
Speaker 3: ten thousand dollars and they pay it out and they

312
00:15:23,440 --> 00:15:26,120
Speaker 3: get an unretouched photo of Faith Hill which before her

313
00:15:26,160 --> 00:15:29,080
Speaker 3: freckles and smile lines have been removed, and really like

314
00:15:29,160 --> 00:15:32,400
Speaker 3: launched this incredibly effective assault on this on everything that

315
00:15:32,480 --> 00:15:35,640
Speaker 3: was wrong with women's magazines, the way they distorted the

316
00:15:35,640 --> 00:15:38,720
Speaker 3: images of people's bodies. There were no black models. And

317
00:15:38,760 --> 00:15:42,320
Speaker 3: they also published this very like frank revelatory writing about

318
00:15:42,320 --> 00:15:46,800
Speaker 3: sex and about women's lives. And they also developed this

319
00:15:47,080 --> 00:15:51,440
Speaker 3: unbelievably intense and pathological relationship with their commentators that sort

320
00:15:51,480 --> 00:15:53,360
Speaker 3: of drove them totally not so and that who in

321
00:15:53,400 --> 00:15:56,400
Speaker 3: the commenters felt they owned them and attacked them. And

322
00:15:56,680 --> 00:15:58,280
Speaker 3: some of the writing was the kind of writing we're

323
00:15:58,280 --> 00:16:00,680
Speaker 3: talking about, where you people sort of expose their own

324
00:16:00,720 --> 00:16:04,480
Speaker 3: lives and then face this intense and very personal criticism.

325
00:16:05,000 --> 00:16:07,440
Speaker 3: And it got enormous amounts of traffic, and Nick Detton,

326
00:16:07,480 --> 00:16:09,840
Speaker 3: who didn't really love the content, kept it going because

327
00:16:09,840 --> 00:16:12,520
Speaker 3: it got so much traffic. But it was both as

328
00:16:12,520 --> 00:16:14,400
Speaker 3: a sort of early glimpse of both that the power

329
00:16:14,560 --> 00:16:16,880
Speaker 3: of that kind of social media age, and then also

330
00:16:17,560 --> 00:16:20,280
Speaker 3: it had damage or the emotions that could provoke and

331
00:16:20,280 --> 00:16:22,000
Speaker 3: how damaging it could be for the writers.

332
00:16:23,240 --> 00:16:26,760
Speaker 1: I want to jump ahead just like a few years.

333
00:16:27,000 --> 00:16:29,960
Speaker 1: You know. It's funny because the day I literally the

334
00:16:30,080 --> 00:16:32,800
Speaker 1: day before the news came out that BuzzFeed News was

335
00:16:32,840 --> 00:16:36,760
Speaker 1: shutting down, I was thinking about this sort of now

336
00:16:36,920 --> 00:16:38,920
Speaker 1: or famous. I guess it was a letter to the

337
00:16:39,000 --> 00:16:41,680
Speaker 1: editor of the All where someone is like, I hate

338
00:16:41,720 --> 00:16:44,120
Speaker 1: my life because I don't work at BuzzFeed. I was

339
00:16:44,160 --> 00:16:46,440
Speaker 1: literally just sharing this article with someone the day before

340
00:16:46,520 --> 00:16:50,560
Speaker 1: the news And the psychological hold that I think, like

341
00:16:50,600 --> 00:16:54,320
Speaker 1: in the BuzzFeed heyday had over everyone else in the

342
00:16:54,360 --> 00:16:58,320
Speaker 1: media was like extraordinary. The pressure to keep up the perception,

343
00:16:58,720 --> 00:17:00,480
Speaker 1: and I think it, you know, I think our reports

344
00:17:00,520 --> 00:17:02,080
Speaker 1: went all the way up to like, you know, board

345
00:17:02,160 --> 00:17:05,000
Speaker 1: level at the New York Times like feeling like what

346
00:17:05,040 --> 00:17:07,840
Speaker 1: are we going to do about this juggernaut. It's so innovative.

347
00:17:07,880 --> 00:17:10,520
Speaker 1: They keep coming up with new story types and traffic

348
00:17:10,560 --> 00:17:13,160
Speaker 1: and influence and all the young people prefer to get

349
00:17:13,240 --> 00:17:16,600
Speaker 1: the news there. But what I'm curious about actually is like,

350
00:17:17,600 --> 00:17:18,919
Speaker 1: what's the date that peaked?

351
00:17:19,480 --> 00:17:20,240
Speaker 3: Twenty fifteen?

352
00:17:20,800 --> 00:17:23,440
Speaker 1: So it was basically like that all it was basically

353
00:17:23,520 --> 00:17:25,320
Speaker 1: like and why twenty like what happened?

354
00:17:25,320 --> 00:17:25,399
Speaker 3: Like?

355
00:17:25,440 --> 00:17:27,200
Speaker 1: What was the turning point in twenty.

356
00:17:27,000 --> 00:17:29,159
Speaker 3: Five I mean to me, you know, BuzzFeed was this

357
00:17:29,480 --> 00:17:32,440
Speaker 3: bat and some of all these companies were a beat

358
00:17:33,080 --> 00:17:37,560
Speaker 3: on that this new form of distribution was durable and

359
00:17:37,560 --> 00:17:40,200
Speaker 3: that the economics would work themselves out. And I think

360
00:17:40,240 --> 00:17:44,040
Speaker 3: everyone now totally rightly can say this was always idiotic.

361
00:17:44,560 --> 00:17:47,720
Speaker 3: Maybe it was, but the basic metaphor analogy everybody's using

362
00:17:47,720 --> 00:17:50,040
Speaker 3: was cable. You know, there were these new form of

363
00:17:50,040 --> 00:17:52,880
Speaker 3: distribution been laid out. The people owning the cable lines

364
00:17:52,920 --> 00:17:55,679
Speaker 3: knew that they needed quality content to populate it, and

365
00:17:55,720 --> 00:18:01,000
Speaker 3: they reached a like economic arrangement where ESPN, CNN, MTV become,

366
00:18:01,480 --> 00:18:03,760
Speaker 3: you know, become these great businesses. And that's what I

367
00:18:03,760 --> 00:18:07,040
Speaker 3: think BuzzFeed and others imagined they would become. And I

368
00:18:07,040 --> 00:18:10,320
Speaker 3: think twenty fifteen was the was really where it started

369
00:18:10,359 --> 00:18:13,520
Speaker 3: to become a little clear a that that these platforms

370
00:18:13,520 --> 00:18:16,440
Speaker 3: themselves are pretty fragile and sort of susceptibled all these

371
00:18:16,480 --> 00:18:21,400
Speaker 3: social pressures and be that's a lot of that. They

372
00:18:21,480 --> 00:18:25,119
Speaker 3: weren't going to move away from their total reliance and

373
00:18:25,240 --> 00:18:28,320
Speaker 3: user generated content to create a business for publishers.

374
00:18:28,680 --> 00:18:31,679
Speaker 2: So, just on this note, my impression was always that,

375
00:18:32,200 --> 00:18:35,320
Speaker 2: in addition to the distribution issues that you just mentioned,

376
00:18:35,320 --> 00:18:37,600
Speaker 2: which we should dig into a little bit further, but

377
00:18:37,720 --> 00:18:40,280
Speaker 2: one of one of the big problems here was that

378
00:18:40,680 --> 00:18:44,840
Speaker 2: the traditional media companies also just got better at doing

379
00:18:45,000 --> 00:18:47,639
Speaker 2: what a lot of the digital media companies were doing.

380
00:18:48,080 --> 00:18:51,320
Speaker 2: And you know, where I worked Alphaville, it wasn't necessarily

381
00:18:51,359 --> 00:18:54,480
Speaker 2: a traffic juggernaut, but it was kind of pioneering of

382
00:18:54,520 --> 00:18:58,479
Speaker 2: a certain type of journalism, certain experiments with you know,

383
00:18:58,640 --> 00:19:02,520
Speaker 2: audience engagement and events and things like that. And what

384
00:19:02,640 --> 00:19:06,080
Speaker 2: always tended to happen within the Financial Times was that

385
00:19:06,119 --> 00:19:09,479
Speaker 2: we would do something new and exciting and innovative, and

386
00:19:09,520 --> 00:19:14,359
Speaker 2: then that would just get replicated by the ft itself,

387
00:19:14,400 --> 00:19:17,479
Speaker 2: and so it becomes hard to sort of maintain the

388
00:19:17,520 --> 00:19:21,719
Speaker 2: momentum of having new types of exciting journalism at a

389
00:19:21,760 --> 00:19:22,520
Speaker 2: constant rate.

390
00:19:22,920 --> 00:19:25,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a sign of a pretty healthy organization basically.

391
00:19:25,920 --> 00:19:28,560
Speaker 3: But there was this arrogance that really came out of

392
00:19:28,600 --> 00:19:30,639
Speaker 3: the oughts where we were looking at the New York Times,

393
00:19:30,640 --> 00:19:32,960
Speaker 3: at the CBS News and it was just it just

394
00:19:32,960 --> 00:19:35,240
Speaker 3: seems so clear that they were doomed that they could

395
00:19:35,280 --> 00:19:38,280
Speaker 3: never figure out digital media, that their leadership just was

396
00:19:38,359 --> 00:19:40,080
Speaker 3: terrified of it and had no idea what was going on.

397
00:19:40,160 --> 00:19:43,040
Speaker 3: And I think this arrogance lasted a long long past

398
00:19:43,080 --> 00:19:45,719
Speaker 3: its expiry date. And we just published on Semaphore an

399
00:19:45,720 --> 00:19:48,879
Speaker 3: excerpt from my book of When Jonah Peretti Goes is

400
00:19:49,000 --> 00:19:51,119
Speaker 3: invited into the New York Times in twenty fifteen to

401
00:19:51,119 --> 00:19:53,280
Speaker 3: tell them how to do their jobs. And it's a

402
00:19:53,600 --> 00:19:55,920
Speaker 3: board he's speaking to a board meeting and the interviewer

403
00:19:55,960 --> 00:19:58,040
Speaker 3: asks him what he would do if he was named

404
00:19:58,080 --> 00:20:00,560
Speaker 3: CEO of the New York Times, and he says, well,

405
00:20:00,600 --> 00:20:03,240
Speaker 3: first I would ask you for a raise, and then

406
00:20:03,320 --> 00:20:05,440
Speaker 3: second I would go into my office, shut my door

407
00:20:05,440 --> 00:20:06,880
Speaker 3: and cry yeah.

408
00:20:07,080 --> 00:20:08,760
Speaker 1: And that's a lot of yeah.

409
00:20:08,840 --> 00:20:12,679
Speaker 3: But what Actually, by then, the Times had started to

410
00:20:12,720 --> 00:20:15,040
Speaker 3: figure it out, and they didn't follow fast. And in fact,

411
00:20:15,080 --> 00:20:17,239
Speaker 3: a number of traditional media companies I'm thinking of the

412
00:20:17,280 --> 00:20:20,920
Speaker 3: Washington Post had really screwed themselves by trying to follow fast,

413
00:20:21,000 --> 00:20:22,760
Speaker 3: like they had copied this thing and that thing in

414
00:20:22,800 --> 00:20:26,480
Speaker 3: blogs and never really built anything. The Times followed slowly

415
00:20:26,520 --> 00:20:30,040
Speaker 3: and carefully, but very very deliberately and very effectively. And

416
00:20:30,040 --> 00:20:33,480
Speaker 3: I think suddenly we looked up and yeah, they had

417
00:20:33,520 --> 00:20:35,639
Speaker 3: copied a lot of our tactics. They had taken a

418
00:20:35,640 --> 00:20:38,679
Speaker 3: lot of our best people and had closed that gap

419
00:20:38,760 --> 00:20:41,840
Speaker 3: and then had could deploy their huge advantages around brand,

420
00:20:41,880 --> 00:20:42,640
Speaker 3: around resources.

421
00:20:43,480 --> 00:20:48,320
Speaker 1: You know, you mentioned the doomed cable analogy and some

422
00:20:48,400 --> 00:20:52,199
Speaker 1: of like that peak and one sort of phrase that

423
00:20:52,320 --> 00:20:54,359
Speaker 1: I think lives rent free, so to speak in the

424
00:20:54,359 --> 00:20:57,560
Speaker 1: head of many journalists to digital journalists is quote the

425
00:20:57,560 --> 00:21:00,680
Speaker 1: pivot to video and all of these the pivot to video,

426
00:21:00,680 --> 00:21:01,520
Speaker 1: We're going to do video.

427
00:21:01,640 --> 00:21:05,200
Speaker 2: And my impression we just launched a video product.

428
00:21:05,720 --> 00:21:08,960
Speaker 3: Water, are we being filmed? I'm still soaking.

429
00:21:08,280 --> 00:21:13,359
Speaker 1: We did odd lots? Is in fact doing a pivot

430
00:21:13,359 --> 00:21:16,159
Speaker 1: to video? No, it's kind of. But my impression is,

431
00:21:16,200 --> 00:21:18,960
Speaker 1: like what happened. Facebook came to a bunch of publishers

432
00:21:19,000 --> 00:21:22,440
Speaker 1: and said, we will you'll go viral more if you

433
00:21:22,600 --> 00:21:23,040
Speaker 1: do video.

434
00:21:23,600 --> 00:21:25,359
Speaker 2: Well, there's a lot driving this.

435
00:21:25,520 --> 00:21:29,040
Speaker 1: There's hire CPMs and you're going to do really well

436
00:21:29,200 --> 00:21:33,560
Speaker 1: and so build all these expensive video studios and you're

437
00:21:33,600 --> 00:21:34,960
Speaker 1: going to make a lot of money. Is that basically

438
00:21:35,000 --> 00:21:36,840
Speaker 1: what happened? Then it didn't materialize in the end.

439
00:21:37,160 --> 00:21:39,320
Speaker 3: Yeah, I find it a little hard to I mean

440
00:21:39,480 --> 00:21:41,520
Speaker 3: to be mad at Facebook for this. They just kind

441
00:21:41,520 --> 00:21:44,760
Speaker 3: of randomly gave a bunch of publishers money and in

442
00:21:44,880 --> 00:21:48,800
Speaker 3: some did redeploy their existing writers who weren't good on

443
00:21:48,920 --> 00:21:51,679
Speaker 3: video to make videos. I mean, I you know, there was,

444
00:21:51,760 --> 00:21:54,920
Speaker 3: there has been in society a pivot to video. There's

445
00:21:54,960 --> 00:21:58,080
Speaker 3: this widely used product called TikTok, which is reliant on

446
00:21:58,119 --> 00:22:00,800
Speaker 3: short video. So I mean, I think then that news

447
00:22:00,920 --> 00:22:02,919
Speaker 3: was going to be delivered in video by people who

448
00:22:03,000 --> 00:22:06,440
Speaker 3: were terrible at making videos was probably not the case,

449
00:22:06,560 --> 00:22:08,600
Speaker 3: but and it was a sign. I think it came

450
00:22:08,800 --> 00:22:11,360
Speaker 3: as a lot of these digital publishers, you know, we're

451
00:22:11,400 --> 00:22:13,359
Speaker 3: scrambling for revenue try to figure out how their businesses

452
00:22:13,359 --> 00:22:15,679
Speaker 3: were supposed to work, and so a pivot was a

453
00:22:15,680 --> 00:22:16,560
Speaker 3: pretty scary thing.

454
00:22:17,080 --> 00:22:20,480
Speaker 2: Can we talk more about the distribution channels here, because

455
00:22:20,520 --> 00:22:22,520
Speaker 2: I think that's the subtext of a lot of what

456
00:22:22,640 --> 00:22:25,119
Speaker 2: we're talking about, which is you had this explosion of

457
00:22:25,160 --> 00:22:28,240
Speaker 2: digital media, but then at the same time you had

458
00:22:28,680 --> 00:22:32,800
Speaker 2: a handful of distribution platforms, so things like Google, Facebook,

459
00:22:32,840 --> 00:22:36,560
Speaker 2: Apple that were growing more and more powerful and sort

460
00:22:36,600 --> 00:22:40,560
Speaker 2: of more concentrated in their own monopoly power. When it

461
00:22:40,600 --> 00:22:43,320
Speaker 2: came to distributing the news. So how much of that

462
00:22:44,000 --> 00:22:46,920
Speaker 2: was a negative force on the digital media business.

463
00:22:47,080 --> 00:22:49,280
Speaker 3: Well, it was the digital media business. I mean, it

464
00:22:49,320 --> 00:22:51,720
Speaker 3: was a hugely positive force, right, much of the digital

465
00:22:51,720 --> 00:22:55,639
Speaker 3: media business, and certainly really BuzzFeed above all was just

466
00:22:55,920 --> 00:22:59,000
Speaker 3: all your chips on the table, bet on Facebook and

467
00:22:59,040 --> 00:23:02,439
Speaker 3: subsidiarily and Pinderest and others, and that they were going

468
00:23:02,480 --> 00:23:06,000
Speaker 3: to be your distribution. And that again, like jonah Pretty's

469
00:23:06,040 --> 00:23:08,320
Speaker 3: basic theory, which I think you can argue now about

470
00:23:08,280 --> 00:23:11,199
Speaker 3: whether it's true or not, was that Facebook and these

471
00:23:11,240 --> 00:23:13,159
Speaker 3: other platforms would find that they had a need for

472
00:23:13,280 --> 00:23:16,560
Speaker 3: quality content to retain their users to compete against places

473
00:23:16,560 --> 00:23:20,280
Speaker 3: like Netflix, and that they would eventually start paying for

474
00:23:20,400 --> 00:23:23,840
Speaker 3: higher and higher quality content as other platforms head through history.

475
00:23:24,200 --> 00:23:26,720
Speaker 3: And that just did not happen, and that that went

476
00:23:26,760 --> 00:23:27,359
Speaker 3: totally wrong.

477
00:23:28,160 --> 00:23:31,280
Speaker 1: Let's here's a twenty twenty three question. How old is

478
00:23:31,320 --> 00:23:32,280
Speaker 1: some of four now about it?

479
00:23:32,359 --> 00:23:33,719
Speaker 3: That's six months six months?

480
00:23:34,160 --> 00:23:37,960
Speaker 1: Where does traffic come from today or where does audience

481
00:23:38,000 --> 00:23:40,560
Speaker 1: if you want to redefine that come from in twenty

482
00:23:40,600 --> 00:23:42,919
Speaker 1: twenty three, because I you know, it doesn't feel like

483
00:23:43,080 --> 00:23:45,280
Speaker 1: many things like go viral at any level anymore.

484
00:23:45,359 --> 00:23:47,680
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's such a totally different world. I mean, newsletters

485
00:23:47,680 --> 00:23:49,760
Speaker 3: are really important to us and probably the sort of

486
00:23:49,800 --> 00:23:53,080
Speaker 3: core of our distribution. The web exists and it's a

487
00:23:53,200 --> 00:23:55,679
Speaker 3: very familiar space to me for someone who's been kind

488
00:23:55,680 --> 00:23:57,840
Speaker 3: of looking at traffic for twenty years, and that the

489
00:23:57,920 --> 00:24:01,200
Speaker 3: Drudge Report is a great is a really important Many

490
00:24:01,240 --> 00:24:04,200
Speaker 3: people continue to go there. There's a set of kind

491
00:24:04,200 --> 00:24:06,720
Speaker 3: of I think it was Asian style aggregators, some Asian,

492
00:24:06,880 --> 00:24:09,760
Speaker 3: some specifically out of Asia, smart news, news break, little

493
00:24:09,760 --> 00:24:13,040
Speaker 3: send traffic, flipboard indoors. But in a weird way, it's

494
00:24:13,040 --> 00:24:16,920
Speaker 3: this Internet from fifteen years ago, before social media existing,

495
00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:19,159
Speaker 3: that has returned. And then you know, we do a

496
00:24:19,160 --> 00:24:21,359
Speaker 3: lot of events which people really like, which is you know,

497
00:24:21,400 --> 00:24:23,480
Speaker 3: the most intimate direct form of audience.

498
00:24:23,880 --> 00:24:27,359
Speaker 2: So is that the future of traffic and audience? Is

499
00:24:27,400 --> 00:24:30,840
Speaker 2: it the sort of smaller scale develop it organically or

500
00:24:30,880 --> 00:24:33,160
Speaker 2: are there still the big channels? I know you mentioned

501
00:24:33,240 --> 00:24:37,240
Speaker 2: Judge Report, but is anyone still trying to target you know,

502
00:24:37,560 --> 00:24:39,160
Speaker 2: Facebook exclusively?

503
00:24:39,320 --> 00:24:41,960
Speaker 3: Now you know, Facebook is just not on our radar

504
00:24:42,119 --> 00:24:44,440
Speaker 3: as a distribution channel at all. I mean, it's a

505
00:24:44,480 --> 00:24:46,200
Speaker 3: really it's I mean that was probably the biggest surprise

506
00:24:46,280 --> 00:24:48,040
Speaker 3: to me in starting a new thing, and I'm not

507
00:24:48,080 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 3: sure there's one future. I mean, I think what we're

508
00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:53,120
Speaker 3: really looking at is a much more splintered landscape in which,

509
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:56,119
Speaker 3: among other things like the web itself and traffic is

510
00:24:56,160 --> 00:24:57,080
Speaker 3: one of the splinters.

511
00:24:58,400 --> 00:25:02,600
Speaker 1: Is there, like ever going to be another publication that

512
00:25:02,720 --> 00:25:05,080
Speaker 1: tries to be a you know, like the thing about

513
00:25:05,760 --> 00:25:09,400
Speaker 1: Insider and the thing about BuzzFeed and the thing about Gawker.

514
00:25:09,680 --> 00:25:12,439
Speaker 1: Through all of the various like Gawker subverticals is that

515
00:25:12,480 --> 00:25:16,000
Speaker 1: they were essentially attempts to replicate or go after the

516
00:25:16,040 --> 00:25:18,200
Speaker 1: New York Times and to create these all in one

517
00:25:18,320 --> 00:25:23,199
Speaker 1: news packages. Huffington Post as well, obviously like destinations that

518
00:25:23,359 --> 00:25:26,160
Speaker 1: had everything like would anyone try that again to sort

519
00:25:26,200 --> 00:25:28,800
Speaker 1: of like create an all purpose news brand?

520
00:25:28,920 --> 00:25:31,840
Speaker 3: What kind of an idiot would do something like that? Well, actually,

521
00:25:31,880 --> 00:25:34,560
Speaker 3: I mean sports, Like you know, it's some.

522
00:25:34,800 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 1: You know we're say would sew for launched sports?

523
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:40,600
Speaker 3: I would say nobody would would try it. Would imagine

524
00:25:40,600 --> 00:25:42,400
Speaker 3: that you can do it in a kind of explosive,

525
00:25:42,760 --> 00:25:45,720
Speaker 3: flip the lights on and reach a billion people in

526
00:25:45,760 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 3: three years kind of a way. I mean, I think

527
00:25:48,440 --> 00:25:51,280
Speaker 3: I do think that it's again a weird changing moment

528
00:25:51,359 --> 00:25:54,040
Speaker 3: where what people want is some people are if the

529
00:25:54,119 --> 00:25:55,840
Speaker 3: challenges are different. If like, you know, when we were

530
00:25:55,840 --> 00:25:58,040
Speaker 3: starting all this stuff, it was so cool to be

531
00:25:58,040 --> 00:26:00,920
Speaker 3: able to read read publications from all over and hear

532
00:26:01,000 --> 00:26:03,639
Speaker 3: voices from all over. Now people are drowning in that

533
00:26:03,760 --> 00:26:06,600
Speaker 3: and are looking for help navigating it. And if you

534
00:26:06,640 --> 00:26:08,600
Speaker 3: can do that, well, that's real value. But it does

535
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:11,360
Speaker 3: feel like a kind of interregnum where there's some next thing.

536
00:26:11,480 --> 00:26:28,520
Speaker 3: We haven't totally seen it yet.

537
00:26:29,560 --> 00:26:32,600
Speaker 2: We haven't really talked about the funding side, which I

538
00:26:32,640 --> 00:26:35,000
Speaker 2: think is important, But we saw a lot of venture

539
00:26:35,040 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 2: capital money flood into the space in the sort of

540
00:26:38,000 --> 00:26:41,840
Speaker 2: twenty tens. What was the story back then and then

541
00:26:41,960 --> 00:26:44,520
Speaker 2: fast forward to today? Are there any vcs out there

542
00:26:44,600 --> 00:26:48,080
Speaker 2: who are very excited about the future of digital media?

543
00:26:48,160 --> 00:26:51,920
Speaker 2: I assume there are some because Somemaphore got some VC funding,

544
00:26:51,960 --> 00:26:54,520
Speaker 2: I believe, But like, what is the story now?

545
00:26:55,080 --> 00:26:57,600
Speaker 3: Yeah, we didn't actually get any sorry funding, and I think,

546
00:26:57,800 --> 00:26:59,359
Speaker 3: you know, that was certainly a lesson. I feel like

547
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:04,200
Speaker 3: I learned from that era the expectation of fast, massive returns.

548
00:27:04,200 --> 00:27:05,840
Speaker 3: And we talked about digital media, but we're really talking

549
00:27:05,840 --> 00:27:08,600
Speaker 3: about the news business, the journalism business. That's a really

550
00:27:08,680 --> 00:27:11,959
Speaker 3: unrealistic expectation and not something that we wanted to promise

551
00:27:12,000 --> 00:27:15,160
Speaker 3: that we would in four years have you know, multiplier

552
00:27:15,280 --> 00:27:18,359
Speaker 3: valuation by a thousand or whatever vcs expect. You know,

553
00:27:18,400 --> 00:27:20,640
Speaker 3: these people aren't well I don't know, I don't They're

554
00:27:20,680 --> 00:27:23,000
Speaker 3: not widely seen as idiots, and they were making these

555
00:27:23,000 --> 00:27:26,280
Speaker 3: big bets on all the publishers we've mentioned. Yeah, because

556
00:27:26,320 --> 00:27:28,640
Speaker 3: they imagined that there was a world in which they

557
00:27:28,680 --> 00:27:31,360
Speaker 3: were companies, you know, in which Vice would be Disney

558
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:34,080
Speaker 3: or which BuzzFeed would be NBC Universal, and these would

559
00:27:34,119 --> 00:27:37,200
Speaker 3: go to massive, massive scale. It's you know, it's interesting

560
00:27:37,240 --> 00:27:39,080
Speaker 3: to think back to how could they have thought such

561
00:27:39,080 --> 00:27:41,040
Speaker 3: a thing. And I think that cable analogy tells some

562
00:27:41,119 --> 00:27:43,960
Speaker 3: of that story. But I don't really see any vcs

563
00:27:44,520 --> 00:27:46,200
Speaker 3: anywhere near the media business right now.

564
00:27:46,280 --> 00:27:49,040
Speaker 1: Can I just quid detour? Because we've been talking about

565
00:27:49,080 --> 00:27:53,919
Speaker 1: Insider and what was Vice? Because I actually, like people

566
00:27:54,040 --> 00:27:56,199
Speaker 1: talked about Vice a lot, but like I never like

567
00:27:56,320 --> 00:27:59,200
Speaker 1: knew someone who like went to Vice dot com.

568
00:27:59,119 --> 00:28:01,399
Speaker 3: Like what was Vice? I know, it's you know, I

569
00:28:01,400 --> 00:28:03,879
Speaker 3: wrote this whole book about traffic, and Advice isn't really

570
00:28:03,880 --> 00:28:06,320
Speaker 3: in it because they didn't get any traffic. They were Ah.

571
00:28:06,600 --> 00:28:10,000
Speaker 3: They were the purest best brand of the digital media era,

572
00:28:10,000 --> 00:28:13,320
Speaker 3: as Shane Smith was the best advertising salesman anyone has

573
00:28:13,400 --> 00:28:17,520
Speaker 3: probably of our generation, and best equity salesman of our generation.

574
00:28:17,920 --> 00:28:20,040
Speaker 3: And they did have this brand that really stood for something.

575
00:28:20,040 --> 00:28:24,520
Speaker 3: They made some incredible documentary mini documentaries that really caught

576
00:28:24,520 --> 00:28:27,719
Speaker 3: people's attention and defined a style of telling stories. They

577
00:28:27,760 --> 00:28:30,400
Speaker 3: did not ever really build digital audience, and what they

578
00:28:30,600 --> 00:28:33,920
Speaker 3: were able to do for a time was to convert

579
00:28:33,960 --> 00:28:36,840
Speaker 3: that brand into a television production company that made a

580
00:28:36,880 --> 00:28:40,280
Speaker 3: pretty good news show for HBO. But the television production business,

581
00:28:40,320 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 3: I mean you think the digital media business is tough,

582
00:28:42,920 --> 00:28:45,200
Speaker 3: I mean that's a really tough business as well, because

583
00:28:45,200 --> 00:28:47,560
Speaker 3: you can get your show canceled, which is ultimately what happened.

584
00:28:48,160 --> 00:28:50,760
Speaker 2: Sorry to keep jumping back in time, but I think

585
00:28:50,800 --> 00:28:53,600
Speaker 2: it sort of informs the current state of the market.

586
00:28:53,680 --> 00:28:57,040
Speaker 2: There was a moment when Shona Peretti was talking about

587
00:28:57,480 --> 00:29:01,480
Speaker 2: like maybe the media could get together to give them

588
00:29:01,560 --> 00:29:06,600
Speaker 2: some more bargaining power over the platforms the distribution channels.

589
00:29:07,280 --> 00:29:10,240
Speaker 2: Was that ever a viable solution to some of the

590
00:29:10,240 --> 00:29:11,560
Speaker 2: issues we've been talking about.

591
00:29:12,000 --> 00:29:15,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, Jonah in particular had an idea that you could

592
00:29:15,040 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 3: basically if you rolled up enough scale on digital media

593
00:29:20,760 --> 00:29:25,479
Speaker 3: that you could gain leverage against Facebook in particular. I mean,

594
00:29:25,520 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 3: you see why that makes sense. I mean it's a

595
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:30,440
Speaker 3: very classic way of thinking about a market. But I

596
00:29:30,480 --> 00:29:33,760
Speaker 3: think there's this underlying problem that what these guys were

597
00:29:33,800 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 3: selling was, you know, that it was not a commodity,

598
00:29:36,880 --> 00:29:40,560
Speaker 3: that scale was infinite, that Facebook, whether or not they

599
00:29:40,560 --> 00:29:44,960
Speaker 3: had access to, you know, high quality journalism, at least

600
00:29:45,000 --> 00:29:47,440
Speaker 3: to the thought that they could reach every single person

601
00:29:47,480 --> 00:29:50,080
Speaker 3: on the planet forever with their better mass trap and

602
00:29:50,120 --> 00:29:52,520
Speaker 3: didn't really need you. Again, I think as you look

603
00:29:52,560 --> 00:29:55,160
Speaker 3: at social media and you watch it unravel, it's not

604
00:29:55,320 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 3: crazy to think about, huh, like, maybe these maybe maybe

605
00:29:58,920 --> 00:30:01,880
Speaker 3: these social platforms should have taken more seriously the idea

606
00:30:01,960 --> 00:30:04,520
Speaker 3: that they should have been pivoting towards subscription services with

607
00:30:04,720 --> 00:30:06,800
Speaker 3: high quality content, since that seems like those are the

608
00:30:06,840 --> 00:30:09,200
Speaker 3: companies that are now winning. But that was it, But

609
00:30:09,240 --> 00:30:11,400
Speaker 3: it also seems inspect that was never going to happen,

610
00:30:11,480 --> 00:30:12,960
Speaker 3: and it was crazy to imagine it would.

611
00:30:13,560 --> 00:30:16,720
Speaker 1: So speaking of bargaining power, you know, I was an

612
00:30:16,720 --> 00:30:19,400
Speaker 1: insider for six years and they were very good for

613
00:30:19,560 --> 00:30:22,840
Speaker 1: my career, etc. As I wouldn't trade that for anything

614
00:30:23,360 --> 00:30:28,880
Speaker 1: except that they were extremely psychologically and physically demanding. I basically,

615
00:30:29,640 --> 00:30:31,520
Speaker 1: I work seven days a week. I would get up

616
00:30:31,520 --> 00:30:34,280
Speaker 1: early on weekends to post. I would probably work twelve

617
00:30:34,320 --> 00:30:36,720
Speaker 1: hours a day on the weekdays. I would wake up

618
00:30:36,720 --> 00:30:39,360
Speaker 1: sometimes so stressed out I would like punch a pillow

619
00:30:39,400 --> 00:30:41,640
Speaker 1: a few times. And the reason I bring up bargaining

620
00:30:41,680 --> 00:30:43,880
Speaker 1: power is that I think a lot of people don't

621
00:30:43,960 --> 00:30:47,560
Speaker 1: like that. And a number of newsrooms have unionized, and

622
00:30:47,600 --> 00:30:51,680
Speaker 1: I'm sort of curious, Like I left Insider prior to

623
00:30:51,880 --> 00:30:56,400
Speaker 1: that newsroom having unionized. But but BuzzFeed News did unionize

624
00:30:56,800 --> 00:30:59,520
Speaker 1: while you were the editor in chief there, right, Yeah,

625
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:01,600
Speaker 1: that's right. How did that change that? Was there like

626
00:31:01,600 --> 00:31:04,120
Speaker 1: a noticeable different in the way like this sort of

627
00:31:04,160 --> 00:31:06,920
Speaker 1: like post post post post that I like grew up in,

628
00:31:07,680 --> 00:31:09,960
Speaker 1: Like did that change or was there like a did

629
00:31:09,960 --> 00:31:12,240
Speaker 1: it shift anything when the news rem union ized? You know?

630
00:31:12,800 --> 00:31:15,200
Speaker 3: I mean maybe we had already moved a little past

631
00:31:15,280 --> 00:31:17,480
Speaker 3: the era that you were talking about where you were

632
00:31:17,480 --> 00:31:19,720
Speaker 3: in a personal foot race with Twitter. Yeah, and you

633
00:31:19,760 --> 00:31:23,080
Speaker 3: were always second, which is pretty amazing, Like no one

634
00:31:23,080 --> 00:31:25,240
Speaker 3: else could manage it. You were the fleetest of foot

635
00:31:25,240 --> 00:31:28,000
Speaker 3: It was crazy, but it did seem stressful still. Second, Yeah,

636
00:31:28,000 --> 00:31:29,560
Speaker 3: and I was, yeah, I mean I was, you know,

637
00:31:29,600 --> 00:31:32,240
Speaker 3: in that race too at various times. No, I don't

638
00:31:32,240 --> 00:31:34,200
Speaker 3: think people I don't think people union ask because they

639
00:31:34,200 --> 00:31:35,760
Speaker 3: wanted to work less hard. I think it was a

640
00:31:35,800 --> 00:31:39,000
Speaker 3: sense of wanting control over your life and your work

641
00:31:39,040 --> 00:31:43,000
Speaker 3: in this very stressful, chaotic moment in America, not just

642
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:45,200
Speaker 3: in you know, in the news business in particular, and

643
00:31:45,240 --> 00:31:49,880
Speaker 3: wanting protection against the downside at a pretty gloomy seeming moment. Yeah,

644
00:31:49,920 --> 00:31:51,680
Speaker 3: but you know, the New York Times, Wall Street journal

645
00:31:51,960 --> 00:31:53,880
Speaker 3: I had unions forever. I think it's you know, it's

646
00:31:53,880 --> 00:31:56,520
Speaker 3: an industry that has a history of pretty strong unions.

647
00:31:56,920 --> 00:31:58,719
Speaker 3: I mean, I think there's this other challenge right now,

648
00:31:58,800 --> 00:32:02,160
Speaker 3: which is that news rooms, good newsrooms are really egalitarian

649
00:32:02,440 --> 00:32:06,080
Speaker 3: and feel it, and unions are part of that culture.

650
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 3: And at the same time, this ecosystem rewards individual journalists

651
00:32:10,840 --> 00:32:13,479
Speaker 3: who get there there whatever. You know, they hate, we

652
00:32:13,520 --> 00:32:17,400
Speaker 3: all hate the words like influencer and brand, but in

653
00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:20,320
Speaker 3: fact that is it's an ecosystem that rewards that. And

654
00:32:20,560 --> 00:32:23,440
Speaker 3: figuring out how you blend those cultures I think is

655
00:32:23,440 --> 00:32:25,440
Speaker 3: a big kind of newsroom challenge.

656
00:32:25,240 --> 00:32:30,760
Speaker 2: Since we mentioned Twitter. It has been interesting watching the

657
00:32:30,800 --> 00:32:33,960
Speaker 2: slow implosion of Twitter at this time, but both Joe

658
00:32:33,960 --> 00:32:37,880
Speaker 2: and I our careers have certainly benefited from that platform.

659
00:32:38,280 --> 00:32:41,840
Speaker 2: What would be the impact of Twitter, you know, suddenly

660
00:32:41,880 --> 00:32:45,840
Speaker 2: going away or either becoming irrelevant on the media industry.

661
00:32:46,520 --> 00:32:48,400
Speaker 3: I mean, I think we're halfway through that process and

662
00:32:48,440 --> 00:32:51,800
Speaker 3: you're seeing it. I think it means that as a consumer,

663
00:32:52,400 --> 00:32:54,080
Speaker 3: I mean, I'm currently and I don't know if you

664
00:32:54,080 --> 00:32:56,360
Speaker 3: feel this or if your listeners feel this, but I

665
00:32:56,400 --> 00:32:58,000
Speaker 3: wake up in the morning and I want to My

666
00:32:58,120 --> 00:32:59,920
Speaker 3: main use case for Twitter had been what is how

667
00:33:00,000 --> 00:33:00,520
Speaker 3: happening there?

668
00:33:01,040 --> 00:33:01,200
Speaker 1: Right?

669
00:33:01,240 --> 00:33:03,320
Speaker 3: And it doesn't do that anymore for me, just like,

670
00:33:03,360 --> 00:33:05,280
Speaker 3: what are the four news stories I need to be watching?

671
00:33:05,280 --> 00:33:06,400
Speaker 3: I need to go to the front page of the

672
00:33:06,440 --> 00:33:09,600
Speaker 3: New York Times or the Drudge Report or seventeen other

673
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:11,960
Speaker 3: places and actually a lot of it some forore, like,

674
00:33:12,000 --> 00:33:14,320
Speaker 3: that's definitely like a job we feel can be done.

675
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:16,680
Speaker 3: What we're trying to do every morning with Flagship is like,

676
00:33:17,000 --> 00:33:18,960
Speaker 3: here's what is happening in the world, because that is

677
00:33:19,000 --> 00:33:22,280
Speaker 3: a service Twitter used to provide. They have what Netwi

678
00:33:22,280 --> 00:33:25,640
Speaker 3: Twitter that provides is this riveting story about itself, which

679
00:33:25,680 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 3: I find very interesting as a long time Twitter user,

680
00:33:27,920 --> 00:33:28,680
Speaker 3: but I watch it.

681
00:33:28,760 --> 00:33:30,600
Speaker 2: That's most of the value now is to see what

682
00:33:30,640 --> 00:33:32,040
Speaker 2: people are saying about Twitter.

683
00:33:32,240 --> 00:33:36,239
Speaker 3: Yeah, but it doesn't do that particular thing and it

684
00:33:36,280 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 3: doesn't you know, and it's yeah, and it's just so so.

685
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:41,280
Speaker 3: But I think as a newswire, as a sort of user,

686
00:33:41,360 --> 00:33:44,080
Speaker 3: it's become less useful. As a journalist, it was a

687
00:33:44,080 --> 00:33:45,760
Speaker 3: good place for people to build their brands to some

688
00:33:45,800 --> 00:33:47,840
Speaker 3: degree still is I think in certain spaces. I think

689
00:33:47,840 --> 00:33:52,680
Speaker 3: in economics AI there are really interesting like threads of

690
00:33:52,720 --> 00:33:55,160
Speaker 3: conversation that are still there and you could imagine. I mean,

691
00:33:55,160 --> 00:33:57,200
Speaker 3: I think Reddit is a really interesting example, like there's

692
00:33:57,200 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 3: a social network that didn't go away, actually probably the

693
00:33:59,560 --> 00:34:02,160
Speaker 3: best place on the internet, but it's also not centrally

694
00:34:02,200 --> 00:34:04,600
Speaker 3: relevant to news in culture, and I think there's a

695
00:34:04,640 --> 00:34:06,040
Speaker 3: path for Twitter that is that.

696
00:34:06,320 --> 00:34:09,320
Speaker 1: Okay, so you mentioned AI. Actually it's funny, Tracy it.

697
00:34:09,400 --> 00:34:12,440
Speaker 1: I recorded an episode earlier in the day and we

698
00:34:12,640 --> 00:34:14,560
Speaker 1: decided that well, from now on, I guess there's always

699
00:34:14,560 --> 00:34:16,600
Speaker 1: going to be an AI question, probably in every interview

700
00:34:16,600 --> 00:34:17,320
Speaker 1: at least, it's.

701
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:18,960
Speaker 2: Usually going to be how is AI going to make

702
00:34:18,960 --> 00:34:19,520
Speaker 2: this worse?

703
00:34:19,840 --> 00:34:24,719
Speaker 1: But actually, like, as someone who makes my living with

704
00:34:24,840 --> 00:34:28,040
Speaker 1: words in one way or another. A. I'm pretty blown

705
00:34:28,080 --> 00:34:31,360
Speaker 1: away by what AI can do, and in my mind,

706
00:34:31,480 --> 00:34:34,880
Speaker 1: I have a fair amount of anxiety that at some

707
00:34:35,000 --> 00:34:37,440
Speaker 1: point in a few years someone could say, you know,

708
00:34:37,520 --> 00:34:39,680
Speaker 1: I'd really like to hear Ben Smith on the Odd

709
00:34:39,719 --> 00:34:42,840
Speaker 1: Lots podcast, and rather than waiting for us to like

710
00:34:42,880 --> 00:34:45,399
Speaker 1: book Ben's Smith and then get it out a week

711
00:34:45,480 --> 00:34:48,520
Speaker 1: later or whatever, they just say, what would it be like?

712
00:34:48,640 --> 00:34:50,879
Speaker 1: And then they run it through a voice generation thing

713
00:34:50,960 --> 00:34:52,600
Speaker 1: and they have like a pretty good version of the

714
00:34:52,600 --> 00:34:55,799
Speaker 1: Odd Lots podcast where Joe and Tracy interview Ben. I'm

715
00:34:55,800 --> 00:34:59,800
Speaker 1: on ironically anxious that this is like a real possibility,

716
00:35:00,440 --> 00:35:02,680
Speaker 1: but in like the next few years, Like, doesn't it

717
00:35:02,719 --> 00:35:03,399
Speaker 1: worry you at all?

718
00:35:04,440 --> 00:35:06,759
Speaker 3: It worries me. I don't think I've quite figured out

719
00:35:06,800 --> 00:35:10,440
Speaker 3: the scenario that's really gonna freak me out, because I

720
00:35:10,440 --> 00:35:12,319
Speaker 3: don't I'm not sure it's that. I mean, I think

721
00:35:12,560 --> 00:35:15,520
Speaker 3: I don't. I think there's already enormous amounts of sort

722
00:35:15,560 --> 00:35:20,040
Speaker 3: of you know, copy pasta random grated content on the Internet,

723
00:35:20,080 --> 00:35:21,359
Speaker 3: and the fact that you could get someone to read

724
00:35:21,360 --> 00:35:23,200
Speaker 3: it aloud in my voice. I'm not sure that's four.

725
00:35:23,560 --> 00:35:25,560
Speaker 3: Like I'm not sure we're I mean, I think there

726
00:35:25,600 --> 00:35:28,040
Speaker 3: was this sort of Google centric view of the Internet

727
00:35:28,040 --> 00:35:30,919
Speaker 3: where if you just sprayed garbage content everywhere, you would

728
00:35:30,920 --> 00:35:32,080
Speaker 3: ocasually make a few pennies.

729
00:35:33,719 --> 00:35:35,560
Speaker 1: My concern is that it's not going to be garbage,

730
00:35:35,680 --> 00:35:39,200
Speaker 1: That it actually will scan the corpus of all Ben

731
00:35:39,320 --> 00:35:42,360
Speaker 1: Smith content and be pretty good and sort of figuring

732
00:35:42,360 --> 00:35:44,520
Speaker 1: out what you were going to answer, That it'll scan

733
00:35:44,800 --> 00:35:47,600
Speaker 1: Joe and Tracy episodes and kind of and be good

734
00:35:47,600 --> 00:35:50,360
Speaker 1: at figuring out the questions we would ask. And I actually,

735
00:35:50,600 --> 00:35:51,279
Speaker 1: I actually.

736
00:35:51,080 --> 00:35:53,880
Speaker 2: Don't worry about that. What I worry about is because

737
00:35:54,080 --> 00:35:57,879
Speaker 2: it will come up with something predictable. What humans will

738
00:35:57,880 --> 00:35:59,719
Speaker 2: have to do, what human journalists will have to do

739
00:35:59,800 --> 00:36:03,440
Speaker 2: is come even more extreme and were unpredictable.

740
00:36:03,200 --> 00:36:05,560
Speaker 3: A really interesting I mean, I don't think your audience

741
00:36:05,640 --> 00:36:08,480
Speaker 3: wants that, Like I think you underestimate your audience, Like

742
00:36:08,840 --> 00:36:11,080
Speaker 3: I think if you if you flagged in advance of

743
00:36:11,120 --> 00:36:15,160
Speaker 3: this episode was entirely AI generated from from re scrambling

744
00:36:15,200 --> 00:36:18,239
Speaker 3: the corpus of things we've said before, they wouldn't listen. Yeah,

745
00:36:18,280 --> 00:36:20,200
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I also and I also I

746
00:36:20,200 --> 00:36:22,160
Speaker 3: guess I sort of come from like the sort of

747
00:36:22,200 --> 00:36:25,000
Speaker 3: scoop world of journalism, Like I care a lot about reporting,

748
00:36:25,040 --> 00:36:26,680
Speaker 3: and it isn't And that's a kind of journalism where

749
00:36:26,719 --> 00:36:28,200
Speaker 3: not only is it's sort of a little harder to

750
00:36:28,239 --> 00:36:31,359
Speaker 3: see AI disrupting it, but also over you know, over

751
00:36:31,400 --> 00:36:34,600
Speaker 3: the last twenty thirty years of editors getting worn away

752
00:36:34,640 --> 00:36:37,520
Speaker 3: in newsrooms, there's been this thing that I've noticed where

753
00:36:37,960 --> 00:36:40,319
Speaker 3: there's a kind of journalist who was not a particularly

754
00:36:40,360 --> 00:36:42,960
Speaker 3: good writer. And in the old days of tabloids, like

755
00:36:43,000 --> 00:36:44,480
Speaker 3: you know, you were a runner and you had a

756
00:36:44,520 --> 00:36:48,360
Speaker 3: rewrite guy. And as these metro newspapers ran out of money,

757
00:36:48,360 --> 00:36:50,280
Speaker 3: the first people to go were these kind of rewrite

758
00:36:50,280 --> 00:36:54,839
Speaker 3: mid level editors. And it really disfavored people who did

759
00:36:54,880 --> 00:36:58,000
Speaker 3: not have fancy educations and or were not good writers,

760
00:36:58,360 --> 00:37:01,040
Speaker 3: but were really great reporters. And I don't know, if

761
00:37:01,040 --> 00:37:02,839
Speaker 3: you have somebody who can really report and can't write

762
00:37:02,840 --> 00:37:04,719
Speaker 3: and wants to use some writing tools, like that's fine

763
00:37:04,719 --> 00:37:04,880
Speaker 3: with me.

764
00:37:05,120 --> 00:37:08,040
Speaker 1: I remember hearing a story Tracy from I Forget, who

765
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:10,080
Speaker 1: is someone at the New York Post talk about how

766
00:37:10,280 --> 00:37:11,919
Speaker 1: you know, they'd have the guy go out and it's

767
00:37:11,960 --> 00:37:14,799
Speaker 1: like a doctor was found dead in a hotel room

768
00:37:14,840 --> 00:37:17,040
Speaker 1: with his girlfriend and then the rewrite gown being okay

769
00:37:17,120 --> 00:37:19,960
Speaker 1: doc with Gail Pale, like could translate it into New

770
00:37:20,040 --> 00:37:20,719
Speaker 1: York Post.

771
00:37:20,520 --> 00:37:22,560
Speaker 3: Speak like and that's and that is and that's like

772
00:37:22,680 --> 00:37:25,480
Speaker 3: literally what what what chat GVT is best at? Right now?

773
00:37:25,640 --> 00:37:27,799
Speaker 2: There was someone at the FT who was exactly like that.

774
00:37:27,840 --> 00:37:30,319
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say who, but I imagine.

775
00:37:30,120 --> 00:37:31,040
Speaker 3: You would make it more boring.

776
00:37:31,280 --> 00:37:33,400
Speaker 2: No, there was someone who is very, very good at

777
00:37:33,480 --> 00:37:36,120
Speaker 2: reporting and getting the story, but had to have all

778
00:37:36,160 --> 00:37:37,440
Speaker 2: of their copy rewritten.

779
00:37:37,480 --> 00:37:41,520
Speaker 3: Oh, they're legendary, fabulous magazine writers whose names we all

780
00:37:41,560 --> 00:37:44,880
Speaker 3: know and admire, whose editors write every word, and like,

781
00:37:44,920 --> 00:37:45,680
Speaker 3: what's wrong with that?

782
00:37:45,760 --> 00:37:47,080
Speaker 1: Like, I think that's a different jobs.

783
00:37:47,080 --> 00:37:49,360
Speaker 3: It's a great form of news production. It's sort of

784
00:37:49,360 --> 00:37:51,000
Speaker 3: too bad that it's all been flattened out. And if

785
00:37:51,000 --> 00:37:52,920
Speaker 3: some of these tools help people write, it's not the

786
00:37:52,960 --> 00:37:54,000
Speaker 3: most important part of the job.

787
00:37:54,480 --> 00:37:56,400
Speaker 2: So one of the things I wanted to ask you

788
00:37:56,520 --> 00:37:58,799
Speaker 2: was I was reading. First of all, I really want

789
00:37:58,800 --> 00:38:01,080
Speaker 2: to read your book. I haven't done it yet, but

790
00:38:01,200 --> 00:38:03,880
Speaker 2: I'm looking forward to it. I was reading instead one

791
00:38:03,920 --> 00:38:04,879
Speaker 2: of the reviews of the book.

792
00:38:04,880 --> 00:38:07,360
Speaker 3: I think it was the one to read the reviews,

793
00:38:07,400 --> 00:38:09,520
Speaker 3: like in that movie Metropolitan, just read the critics.

794
00:38:09,560 --> 00:38:12,200
Speaker 2: I think it was probably John Gapper or someone like that,

795
00:38:12,400 --> 00:38:14,640
Speaker 2: but they had a line in there saying that they

796
00:38:14,680 --> 00:38:17,680
Speaker 2: felt that in the book there was no moral conclusion

797
00:38:17,920 --> 00:38:21,560
Speaker 2: about this whole episode of digital media. So I guess

798
00:38:21,560 --> 00:38:23,799
Speaker 2: I'd love to hear from you, you know, here's your

799
00:38:23,880 --> 00:38:26,960
Speaker 2: chance at a clear moral conclusion, like what is the

800
00:38:27,000 --> 00:38:30,319
Speaker 2: big takeaway of the past ten or fifteen years in

801
00:38:30,400 --> 00:38:31,400
Speaker 2: digital journalism?

802
00:38:31,440 --> 00:38:34,560
Speaker 3: It's the old apocryphal John lie thing, So too soon

803
00:38:34,600 --> 00:38:36,440
Speaker 3: to tell, But I think I don't know about a

804
00:38:36,440 --> 00:38:38,400
Speaker 3: moral conclusion, but would say the thing that surprised me

805
00:38:38,480 --> 00:38:41,480
Speaker 3: most in the reporting was that that world that we

806
00:38:41,600 --> 00:38:43,879
Speaker 3: that I was reporting on, that we were all in

807
00:38:43,880 --> 00:38:46,480
Speaker 3: in the kind of early Internet I think was assumed

808
00:38:46,600 --> 00:38:49,680
Speaker 3: thought itself to be politically progressive, like without really thinking

809
00:38:49,680 --> 00:38:52,760
Speaker 3: about it, these were the Internet was where young people

810
00:38:52,800 --> 00:38:55,640
Speaker 3: got together to elect Barack Obama. And you know Barack

811
00:38:55,680 --> 00:38:58,520
Speaker 3: Obama pays a visit to Facebook. Obviously Facebook. You know,

812
00:38:58,520 --> 00:39:01,400
Speaker 3: it goes with that saying book is a democratic place

813
00:39:01,880 --> 00:39:05,200
Speaker 3: where that is friendly to Barack Obama. And I think

814
00:39:05,320 --> 00:39:07,640
Speaker 3: the people, some of the people at Huffington Post totally

815
00:39:07,680 --> 00:39:10,560
Speaker 3: explicitly their job was to elect Barack Obama, and I

816
00:39:10,560 --> 00:39:14,040
Speaker 3: think it was a surprise to me and the reporting

817
00:39:14,080 --> 00:39:16,160
Speaker 3: to see that the sort of people who created the

818
00:39:16,200 --> 00:39:19,400
Speaker 3: populist right. You know, the guy Chris Pool who founded

819
00:39:19,400 --> 00:39:21,600
Speaker 3: four Chan worked out of BuzzFeed's offices. I don't think

820
00:39:21,600 --> 00:39:24,400
Speaker 3: he was a conservative, but he built that. Andrew Breichbart

821
00:39:24,440 --> 00:39:26,759
Speaker 3: was a co founder of Huffington Post. Steve Bannon comes

822
00:39:26,760 --> 00:39:28,920
Speaker 3: through and learns from Huffington Post and so on and

823
00:39:28,960 --> 00:39:31,800
Speaker 3: so on. And then, like I think, if the people

824
00:39:31,840 --> 00:39:34,839
Speaker 3: who thought that the election of Barack Obama was kind

825
00:39:34,840 --> 00:39:37,840
Speaker 3: of the apage of this whole moment, yeah, turn around

826
00:39:37,880 --> 00:39:40,759
Speaker 3: and suddenly, actually the election of Donald Trump is the

827
00:39:40,800 --> 00:39:42,759
Speaker 3: apogee of the moment, and the people who thought they

828
00:39:42,760 --> 00:39:46,560
Speaker 3: were the main characters actually were the supporting characters. And

829
00:39:46,640 --> 00:39:49,759
Speaker 3: the main characters were these conservatives who'd been we thought

830
00:39:49,800 --> 00:39:51,799
Speaker 3: had been hanging around the edges, but actually were the

831
00:39:51,840 --> 00:39:52,600
Speaker 3: central thrust.

832
00:39:53,080 --> 00:39:56,239
Speaker 1: One thing that you know, since we're talking politics, you know,

833
00:39:56,280 --> 00:39:59,360
Speaker 1: we have the various cable networks on TV, like in

834
00:39:59,400 --> 00:40:02,359
Speaker 1: the newsroom, and they're all on mute, so I don't

835
00:40:02,400 --> 00:40:05,120
Speaker 1: really listen to them. But one thing I definitely noticed

836
00:40:05,280 --> 00:40:08,120
Speaker 1: is that like CNN and like maybe some of the others,

837
00:40:08,400 --> 00:40:10,879
Speaker 1: they've never been able to quit Trump. I mean, it's

838
00:40:10,920 --> 00:40:13,839
Speaker 1: like Biden has been the president for like over two

839
00:40:13,920 --> 00:40:16,359
Speaker 1: years now, and I'm pretty sure at least I see

840
00:40:16,360 --> 00:40:19,680
Speaker 1: as much Trump pretty much constantly. I don't know, I'm

841
00:40:19,680 --> 00:40:21,480
Speaker 1: just sort of curious, Like the last thing like this

842
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:25,360
Speaker 1: very like strange love hate. I kind of think the

843
00:40:25,360 --> 00:40:28,040
Speaker 1: media mostly loves Trump, even if like the words are

844
00:40:28,120 --> 00:40:31,040
Speaker 1: kind of anti Trump. Like I'm just like, what like

845
00:40:31,200 --> 00:40:33,840
Speaker 1: the Trump era and beyond has like done to the media.

846
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:37,800
Speaker 3: I mean, the rise of this you know, reality show

847
00:40:37,920 --> 00:40:41,720
Speaker 3: star turned would be authoritarian is obviously the biggest story,

848
00:40:42,080 --> 00:40:44,160
Speaker 3: you know, in this period of American history. So I

849
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:47,640
Speaker 3: don't think it's crazy that the media covers it or

850
00:40:47,640 --> 00:40:50,880
Speaker 3: that its viewers are very interested in it. And but

851
00:40:50,600 --> 00:40:53,080
Speaker 3: I but obviously also, you know, TV has its own

852
00:40:53,120 --> 00:40:55,680
Speaker 3: form of traffic, which is ratings. Yeah, And there's a

853
00:40:55,719 --> 00:40:58,879
Speaker 3: sense in which Trump in twenty sixteen was like sort

854
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,960
Speaker 3: of providing free syndic content to CNN that was just

855
00:41:02,040 --> 00:41:03,759
Speaker 3: putting it on and people were watching it. I mean

856
00:41:03,800 --> 00:41:07,200
Speaker 3: Newsmax was competitive with other channels the other day because

857
00:41:07,200 --> 00:41:11,200
Speaker 3: it just put a Trump speech on unfiltered, and CNN

858
00:41:11,320 --> 00:41:15,839
Speaker 3: is going back to the well and on town hall

859
00:41:15,880 --> 00:41:18,799
Speaker 3: with Donald Trump. Yeah, I mean, I mean, I think

860
00:41:18,840 --> 00:41:21,359
Speaker 3: it's you know, I think sometimes the media overestimates our

861
00:41:21,400 --> 00:41:24,120
Speaker 3: own role and our own power. And you know, Trump,

862
00:41:24,120 --> 00:41:27,000
Speaker 3: in fact, basically was banned from cable Rupert Murdoch said

863
00:41:27,000 --> 00:41:28,360
Speaker 3: that he was going to make him a non person.

864
00:41:28,719 --> 00:41:31,040
Speaker 3: He was banned from the social networks, and he remained

865
00:41:31,200 --> 00:41:34,319
Speaker 3: very popular because a lot of Republicans really love him

866
00:41:34,360 --> 00:41:37,400
Speaker 3: and like what he's selling. And maybe we overestimated the

867
00:41:37,480 --> 00:41:39,560
Speaker 3: role of the media in that, like they weren't confused

868
00:41:39,600 --> 00:41:42,640
Speaker 3: about who he was, they hadn't been tricked. They just

869
00:41:42,719 --> 00:41:46,239
Speaker 3: really like him. And so it's not particularly healthy for

870
00:41:46,280 --> 00:41:48,560
Speaker 3: a country. Like when a country's consuming as much news

871
00:41:48,600 --> 00:41:51,560
Speaker 3: as this country was in the period twenty sixteen twenty twenty,

872
00:41:51,560 --> 00:41:53,680
Speaker 3: that's like not a great sign. It was probably a

873
00:41:53,719 --> 00:41:56,720
Speaker 3: more normal country that consumes less news, and we're headed

874
00:41:56,719 --> 00:41:59,560
Speaker 3: probably to another national panic attack and consume a lot

875
00:41:59,560 --> 00:41:59,919
Speaker 3: of news.

876
00:42:00,239 --> 00:42:03,960
Speaker 2: I do remember before Trump won the presidency. I think

877
00:42:04,000 --> 00:42:05,799
Speaker 2: I was in Abu Dhabi at the time and I

878
00:42:05,880 --> 00:42:08,920
Speaker 2: wasn't watching cable news, and I remember coming back to

879
00:42:08,920 --> 00:42:12,560
Speaker 2: the US for a visit and seeing CNN and it

880
00:42:12,600 --> 00:42:15,920
Speaker 2: was just Trump like wall to wall coverage of Trump,

881
00:42:16,000 --> 00:42:18,319
Speaker 2: and up until that point, I thought like, oh, this

882
00:42:18,400 --> 00:42:20,279
Speaker 2: is crazy, but then you see him on TV all

883
00:42:20,280 --> 00:42:22,080
Speaker 2: the time and you're like, oh wait a second. But

884
00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:24,759
Speaker 2: just on that note, I mean, so I think the

885
00:42:24,800 --> 00:42:29,040
Speaker 2: thing that traffic and cable news all kind of has

886
00:42:29,160 --> 00:42:31,680
Speaker 2: in common. And going back to the question I asked

887
00:42:31,719 --> 00:42:36,200
Speaker 2: earlier about the hate read, is a way to get

888
00:42:36,239 --> 00:42:40,760
Speaker 2: people's attention is obviously to provoke outrage or to play

889
00:42:40,960 --> 00:42:46,360
Speaker 2: to previously held opinions. Once that can has been opened

890
00:42:46,800 --> 00:42:49,640
Speaker 2: or once that box has been opened, can we ever

891
00:42:49,760 --> 00:42:54,240
Speaker 2: go back to that sort of like classic maybe nineteen fifties,

892
00:42:54,320 --> 00:42:59,720
Speaker 2: nineteen sixties era of you know, unbiased media coverage, bipartisan coverage,

893
00:43:00,080 --> 00:43:03,480
Speaker 2: heels to all types of people, or is that just gone?

894
00:43:03,560 --> 00:43:05,719
Speaker 3: I mean, I think that specific thing you're talking about

895
00:43:05,760 --> 00:43:09,520
Speaker 3: isn't so much classic as a sort of temporary product

896
00:43:09,520 --> 00:43:12,759
Speaker 3: of post war metropolitan newspaper businesses that were that you know,

897
00:43:12,800 --> 00:43:15,480
Speaker 3: we're selling, you know, we're these monopoly advertising businesses that

898
00:43:15,520 --> 00:43:18,520
Speaker 3: wanted to sell to everybody. But I also think, you know,

899
00:43:19,120 --> 00:43:21,640
Speaker 3: the sort of suddenly the lights turned on when the

900
00:43:22,239 --> 00:43:25,560
Speaker 3: data from digital media came in, and suddenly these people

901
00:43:25,560 --> 00:43:30,040
Speaker 3: who've been not only flying without instruments but kind of sleepwalking.

902
00:43:30,480 --> 00:43:32,000
Speaker 3: You know, they've been doing the same thing for years

903
00:43:32,040 --> 00:43:35,320
Speaker 3: and years and in a pretty in a declining industry,

904
00:43:35,640 --> 00:43:37,480
Speaker 3: and suddenly they could you know, they were flying with

905
00:43:37,560 --> 00:43:40,120
Speaker 3: instruments and we could all suddenly see and you know,

906
00:43:40,840 --> 00:43:44,400
Speaker 3: exquisite detail everyone who was reading everything and it and

907
00:43:44,440 --> 00:43:48,800
Speaker 3: in many ways probably you know, over overtrqued toward that lesson.

908
00:43:48,840 --> 00:43:51,320
Speaker 1: All right, I have one last question. It's very self

909
00:43:51,360 --> 00:43:55,279
Speaker 1: serving for me and Tracy, but I feel like, to

910
00:43:55,400 --> 00:43:58,800
Speaker 1: some extent, and tell me of you disagree to some extent,

911
00:43:59,239 --> 00:44:01,359
Speaker 1: I feel like when you look at all of the

912
00:44:01,400 --> 00:44:05,040
Speaker 1: big changes that have undergone the news business, in a way,

913
00:44:05,120 --> 00:44:07,480
Speaker 1: business news is a bit of an exception and that

914
00:44:07,560 --> 00:44:10,920
Speaker 1: it's been more stable. And I remember an insider when

915
00:44:10,960 --> 00:44:13,960
Speaker 1: you like, I'm a huge admirer and was at the

916
00:44:13,960 --> 00:44:17,400
Speaker 1: whole time of like BuzzFeed News, but I remember I

917
00:44:17,480 --> 00:44:19,759
Speaker 1: was like paranoid when you guys launched a business section

918
00:44:19,840 --> 00:44:21,640
Speaker 1: because I was like, oh, now you're gonna come and

919
00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:24,240
Speaker 1: it didn't really click in my opinion, like it didn't

920
00:44:24,280 --> 00:44:27,799
Speaker 1: really work. And generally speaking, it does not feel like

921
00:44:27,960 --> 00:44:31,719
Speaker 1: the level of disruption and sort of like tumult that

922
00:44:31,880 --> 00:44:34,720
Speaker 1: many parts of the industry has faced has hit business

923
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:36,719
Speaker 1: news quite the same way. And the Wallshet Journal is

924
00:44:36,719 --> 00:44:39,840
Speaker 1: still powerhouse and Bloomberg is still a powerhouse, et cetera.

925
00:44:40,000 --> 00:44:42,400
Speaker 1: Is there Do you feel that that's the case? Like

926
00:44:42,440 --> 00:44:44,920
Speaker 1: what it was it about business news, even at BuzzFeed

927
00:44:44,920 --> 00:44:48,120
Speaker 1: that made it unlike say some of these other categories.

928
00:44:48,440 --> 00:44:50,600
Speaker 3: Well, I think it was more competitive, and it was

929
00:44:50,719 --> 00:44:54,840
Speaker 3: better resourced, and you had healthier institutions. And that's because

930
00:44:54,880 --> 00:44:57,480
Speaker 3: business is where the money is. I mean, I think

931
00:44:57,520 --> 00:45:00,680
Speaker 3: that's actually why it's a better business than general christ news,

932
00:45:01,120 --> 00:45:03,160
Speaker 3: you know, just for the literal reason that people are

933
00:45:03,480 --> 00:45:06,360
Speaker 3: making money on what you and what you produce, and

934
00:45:06,400 --> 00:45:09,040
Speaker 3: so they can and trading on it and subscribing. I mean,

935
00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:11,440
Speaker 3: this institution is probably the best example of that.

936
00:45:11,719 --> 00:45:14,520
Speaker 1: I'm not kidding about the psychological effects on me in

937
00:45:14,560 --> 00:45:16,319
Speaker 1: those years. I mean I've like gotten over it, and

938
00:45:16,480 --> 00:45:17,879
Speaker 1: it's not one of these things like oh I needed

939
00:45:17,960 --> 00:45:21,520
Speaker 1: years of therapy, but like those were really extremely stressful years.

940
00:45:21,520 --> 00:45:25,600
Speaker 1: And I remember before BuzzFeed launched its business section just

941
00:45:25,640 --> 00:45:28,160
Speaker 1: being like insanely stressed. I was like, my life is

942
00:45:28,160 --> 00:45:31,480
Speaker 1: stressful enough. And now like the news entity that's the

943
00:45:31,560 --> 00:45:34,160
Speaker 1: juggernaut of all things is coming after business news and

944
00:45:34,160 --> 00:45:34,680
Speaker 1: now we're done.

945
00:45:34,680 --> 00:45:36,799
Speaker 3: But well, I'm glad we didn't. We didn't push Thank

946
00:45:36,840 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 3: you that one.

947
00:45:37,719 --> 00:45:41,120
Speaker 1: Thank you for not Thank you for Ben, Thank you

948
00:45:41,160 --> 00:45:42,719
Speaker 1: so much for coming on Odd Lost. This was a

949
00:45:42,719 --> 00:45:43,200
Speaker 1: lot of fun.

950
00:45:43,280 --> 00:45:44,719
Speaker 3: Thank you so much for having me on.

951
00:45:44,920 --> 00:45:45,959
Speaker 2: Thanks Ben. That was great.

952
00:45:46,040 --> 00:46:01,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was great, Tracy, that was a lot of fun.

953
00:46:01,440 --> 00:46:04,360
Speaker 1: I hope the listeners found it fun because for me, actually,

954
00:46:04,440 --> 00:46:06,480
Speaker 1: like I could talk about this for hours, Like there

955
00:46:06,480 --> 00:46:09,719
Speaker 1: are not many topics that we discussed on the show

956
00:46:09,719 --> 00:46:11,839
Speaker 1: in which I feel like I have expertise, like that's

957
00:46:11,840 --> 00:46:15,120
Speaker 1: why I'm the interviewer, but like on the digital media

958
00:46:15,160 --> 00:46:17,279
Speaker 1: business of the last fifteen years, which were both in

959
00:46:17,400 --> 00:46:18,920
Speaker 1: I kind of consider us both experts.

960
00:46:19,160 --> 00:46:21,040
Speaker 2: Joe, you know which one of us got more traffic

961
00:46:21,160 --> 00:46:21,600
Speaker 2: last year?

962
00:46:22,360 --> 00:46:23,560
Speaker 1: Uh? It was you? It wasn't it?

963
00:46:23,560 --> 00:46:24,320
Speaker 2: It was me? Was it?

964
00:46:24,440 --> 00:46:26,359
Speaker 1: It was like one of those housing store what was it?

965
00:46:26,440 --> 00:46:28,000
Speaker 1: You had so many? I had a bunch.

966
00:46:28,200 --> 00:46:31,000
Speaker 2: I was just behind Matt Levine in the in the

967
00:46:31,040 --> 00:46:34,320
Speaker 2: traffic ranks. But I actually that's something we didn't talk about,

968
00:46:34,520 --> 00:46:37,440
Speaker 2: is the data visibility, because this was one of the

969
00:46:37,520 --> 00:46:41,360
Speaker 2: like defining things of digital journalism, which was you could

970
00:46:41,480 --> 00:46:45,840
Speaker 2: see how many people were reading your article in real time,

971
00:46:46,000 --> 00:46:48,719
Speaker 2: and that really helped you focus on the type of

972
00:46:48,760 --> 00:46:49,640
Speaker 2: content you were producer.

973
00:46:49,640 --> 00:46:52,200
Speaker 1: There's a lot there. I mean, so an insider, it

974
00:46:52,239 --> 00:46:54,160
Speaker 1: was on the walls, like it was on on the

975
00:46:54,320 --> 00:46:57,200
Speaker 1: like a scoreboard. It was on the scoreboard for everyone's.

976
00:46:56,800 --> 00:46:57,640
Speaker 2: Just that's crazy.

977
00:46:57,719 --> 00:46:59,760
Speaker 1: It was I'm telling you, I don't want to totally

978
00:46:59,760 --> 00:47:03,840
Speaker 1: over exaggerated and say scarred for years, but the stress

979
00:47:04,360 --> 00:47:07,520
Speaker 1: that caused people to like see everyone's traffic on the

980
00:47:07,600 --> 00:47:09,120
Speaker 1: walls and all the time, it did two things that

981
00:47:09,200 --> 00:47:13,239
Speaker 1: drove people crazy, and it turned people into absolute juggernauts.

982
00:47:13,280 --> 00:47:15,120
Speaker 1: And you could take someone out of school from like

983
00:47:15,400 --> 00:47:19,319
Speaker 1: Columbia Jay School or UNC or Duke or Northwestern, and

984
00:47:19,480 --> 00:47:21,160
Speaker 1: in a few months they were a traffic moster.

985
00:47:21,280 --> 00:47:24,640
Speaker 2: But see, this is also why I asked that question

986
00:47:24,760 --> 00:47:28,480
Speaker 2: about hate reads, because you can produce a headline that

987
00:47:28,520 --> 00:47:30,719
Speaker 2: will get a bunch of people to click on it,

988
00:47:30,880 --> 00:47:34,640
Speaker 2: but not necessarily in a good way. And I feel

989
00:47:34,640 --> 00:47:37,600
Speaker 2: like a lot of digital journalism was about provoking that

990
00:47:37,760 --> 00:47:42,240
Speaker 2: response and not necessarily building up a dedicated audience.

991
00:47:42,600 --> 00:47:45,160
Speaker 1: Henry Blodgett, what it's like to actually eat a cheeseburger.

992
00:47:45,360 --> 00:47:47,359
Speaker 1: What it's actually you know, like those were like hate

993
00:47:47,360 --> 00:47:49,440
Speaker 1: reads and Veterans is so good.

994
00:47:49,520 --> 00:47:52,920
Speaker 2: But like, but you know, there's no differentiating between someone

995
00:47:52,960 --> 00:47:56,440
Speaker 2: reading something because it's fair and balanced and accurate and

996
00:47:56,480 --> 00:48:00,640
Speaker 2: insightful versus someone reading something because it's provocative or stupid

997
00:48:00,960 --> 00:48:02,640
Speaker 2: or extreme in one way or another.

998
00:48:03,480 --> 00:48:06,560
Speaker 1: Your point is something I'm very concerned about about AI,

999
00:48:06,760 --> 00:48:09,680
Speaker 1: which is if there's this perception that's sort of like

1000
00:48:09,800 --> 00:48:12,160
Speaker 1: AI is going to be really good at the sort

1001
00:48:12,200 --> 00:48:16,640
Speaker 1: of commodity normal, and all these people in media think like, oh,

1002
00:48:16,760 --> 00:48:19,479
Speaker 1: I got to really like I have to AI proof

1003
00:48:19,600 --> 00:48:20,200
Speaker 1: my career.

1004
00:48:20,719 --> 00:48:23,600
Speaker 2: You have to turbo charge the hot takes.

1005
00:48:23,719 --> 00:48:26,719
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm like, this is what social media did, and I

1006
00:48:26,719 --> 00:48:28,480
Speaker 1: think this is one I don't know. I think it's

1007
00:48:28,520 --> 00:48:29,800
Speaker 1: going to be even more extreme.

1008
00:48:29,920 --> 00:48:32,160
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's what I think too. All Right, on that

1009
00:48:32,280 --> 00:48:33,879
Speaker 2: happy note, shall we leave it there.

1010
00:48:34,040 --> 00:48:35,279
Speaker 1: Let's leave it there, all right.

1011
00:48:35,400 --> 00:48:38,240
Speaker 2: This has been another episode of the All Thoughts Podcast.

1012
00:48:38,320 --> 00:48:40,759
Speaker 2: I'm Tracy Alloway. You can follow me on Twitter at

1013
00:48:40,760 --> 00:48:42,000
Speaker 2: Tracy Alloway.

1014
00:48:41,680 --> 00:48:44,600
Speaker 1: And I'm Joe Wisenthal. You can follow me on Twitter

1015
00:48:44,760 --> 00:48:47,760
Speaker 1: at the Stalwart. You can follow our guest Ben Smith.

1016
00:48:47,840 --> 00:48:52,000
Speaker 1: He's at semaphore Ben and check out his new book Traffic.

1017
00:48:52,440 --> 00:48:56,000
Speaker 1: Follow our producers Carmen Rodriguez at Carmen Arman and dash

1018
00:48:56,000 --> 00:48:59,600
Speaker 1: Ol Bennett at dashbot. And for more odd Lots content,

1019
00:48:59,680 --> 00:49:02,839
Speaker 1: go to Bloomberg dot com slash odd lots, where we

1020
00:49:02,920 --> 00:49:05,480
Speaker 1: post the transcripts. We have a blog, a newsletter that

1021
00:49:05,520 --> 00:49:09,400
Speaker 1: comes out every Friday, and we have a discord Discord

1022
00:49:09,440 --> 00:49:12,040
Speaker 1: dot gg slash odd lots. Listeners are in there twenty

1023
00:49:12,080 --> 00:49:14,719
Speaker 1: four to seven talk about all this stuff. It's really fun.

1024
00:49:14,800 --> 00:49:17,200
Speaker 1: It might even be the future of media we can do.

1025
00:49:17,360 --> 00:49:19,719
Speaker 1: It's really great. I love it. It's a great place

1026
00:49:19,760 --> 00:49:20,239
Speaker 1: to hang out.

1027
00:49:20,360 --> 00:49:22,960
Speaker 2: Leave Twitter and joining us, join us on discord

1028
00:49:23,200 --> 00:49:26,320
Speaker 1: On ironically that go check it out and thanks for listening.