YouSaid · the spoken record

Ben Smith

lines on the record: 77
first: 2023-04-24
most recent: 2023-04-24
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“Kicking, and in some cases with enormous misery. And, you know, it's not, I don't think it's trivial for these institutions. It's both that management hates it because they lose leverage. But also there's this wonderful, egalitarian... Culture historically in newsrooms represented in some cases by unions. And the notion that value is migrating increasingly to a few stars is really intention with that culture. And I don't envy the people trying to navigate because I think it's a really hard challenge.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so, actually. I think that great journalists really do want the camaraderie, the support, the teamwork of a great newsroom. And by the way, a strong newsroom and editor that you can occasionally hide behind when it gets really hot out there sometimes and you don't just want to be out there on your own. But they also really do want a direct personal connection with their audience. I think successful newsrooms are going to give people both.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think the big story in some ways about news, media is a huge business, but I think about news, which is a smaller business, is going to be about the tensions between institutions. And the challenge, which I certainly think about constantly about how do you square the two? How do you get the best of both worlds and have an institution with all the great things in the newsroom and the lawyers and the editing and the support that a great newsroom brings that also unleashes and opens up journalistic talent rather than sort of trying to undermine it? And how do you square that circle? I think that's the big management challenge for all of us, but also opportunity.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't think everybody does. I think there are certain kinds of reporters. Like if you're an investigative reporter who just wants to spend two years on one topic, blow it open, disappear for two more years and come back with something totally different. You're not really trying to build an audience around your own voice or a source space. But for beat reporters in particular, it's just a delight to work this way.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Creator. It's such a gross idea that that's what journalists are. And yet at the same time. I think a lot of journalists, partly thanks to Twitter, feel the romance and the tug of, wow, there's an audience that's actually interested in what I have to say, knows who I am and my voice, not just me as a cog and a giant Wall Street Journal, New York Times machine.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think some people, I mean, I think some people really love those institutions and will never leave. And I mean, I think different people have really different ideas of where they want to go with their careers, but I do think there's this funny moment where if you say words like influencer or brand to a journalist, they like throw up in their mouths”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“To be sure. Yeah, bring her into where journalists smuggle their views in through quotes and through adjectives and just say and give her a space where she's breaking a huge story and then she's telling you what she thinks about it, but she's confident enough actually to know the difference between facts and her analysis and to include room for disagreement as well.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I feel like we peeled pretty great people off of pretty marquee names off big places where Stave Waggle or Liz Hoffman. And I mean, I think like Liz, who's a superstar finance reporter. Great example of this, which is that here's somebody who is a real true star at the Wall Street Journal, who, if you talk to somebody in finance, not only knew her work, but knew what she thought and knew her perspective, but that you did not get that in the Wall Street Journal. What you got was the news with no sense of what Liz Hoffman thought. But Liz Hoffman knows a lot about this stuff. And I think the pitch to journalists and to readers is like, we're going to take her out of this kind of wooden. Opaque News article”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And as you economize in these difficult times. Hope you'll keep that in mind. But that you're hearing directly unfiltered from great journalists who really know what they're talking about on beats that they are truly expert in. You got to read it because they are breaking huge stories. And then they're also telling you what they think about them. And they're helping navigate all the zillion things everybody else is writing and saying about everything at all times.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, and I think it sounded very silly when I said it, but I think if you look, we were up and running in a really significant way that we're proud of across several African countries and building around that as we build in the US. And I think that's a really good model that we'll take elsewhere.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think the strongest pitch to investors was in particular that my partner had been really, really successful. I mean, first of all, like, it's a very hard business, and Justin is a great operator. I do think that's really underrated. I think like execution focus, those things in our business are incredibly underrated. And actually, I think what we told investors and, you know, I don't think we said anything different to investors and everybody else was really about the audience and how sick people are of what they're getting and how it feels like it's this moment when there's an opportunity to give them something more transparent, more global, and more like focused on helping them get through the sort of chaos of broken late social media.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, we just launched the company, so I think we feel, I hope, I mean, I feel, and I hope Justin, my partner who's really responsible for Renew Fields, just immense pressure from all sides to get revenue in. I mean, I think one of the things I learned from BuzzFeed, or really not just BuzzFeed, but it's that whole venture-backed era in media, is that I'd rather build more slowly and carefully with a business that is really paying the bills.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, but the biggest stories you break have a huge audience. But day to day, you're talking to a smaller audience. Yeah. I mean, the thing about the Facebook era was that you could sort of imaginably reach every single person in the whole world and see, you know, like, you know, like the dress. Was this global instant cultural phenomenon? And I think the internet isn't built that way anymore.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think there's an argument, and I think maybe something that I was learning while I was a BuzzFeed, that the business of news in particular is not really about you're not going to compete for scale with entertainment. And so you have to get an audience who people really want to reach in our case, people who are very, very influential and central to the beats they're on, who you can gather in person, who you can reach very directly with newsletters. And you can build an advertising business. You can build other businesses around that. And I think the nice thing about that kind of journalism is that if you're talking to and breaking news about the central figures in really important areas, whether it's politics, finance. There's a huge audience that's interested in that and who will come along for that.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I want to write for people who want to read it. The thing I miss most about the times actually is the depth and quality of editing.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“A friend of journalists, but there's a level of the times just gets you into the room. And then there is a big audience who really cares. Although if you write something stupid and boring there, nobody reads it anyway. And if you write something interesting somewhere else, it'll find its audience. And I guess I'm...”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“If you're Kara Swisher, everybody knows honestly, he returns my emails too. I don't know. Maybe he's a bad example. He's a very, you know, he's a”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, the fun thing about the Times, as you know, is just that you can sort of call Bob Eiger and he kind of feels like he has to call you back.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And it speaks to the fragmentation of media that they have three or four million people who really love them. And in a country of 300 million, but that's great business and enough to really capture a big chunk of politics.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“He speaks for their base, and I think they don't feel like they have a lot of room to maneuver, so they'll do whatever he wants”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, newsmax, I mean Newsmax much less relevant thing, but the only challenge for Newsmax is it is a cat with a mouse in its hand. Does it want to squeeze drops of, would it like to take the mouse's blood in monthly installments or would it like to drive the mouse into bankruptcy? This is a terrible metaphor. But that's, I mean, Dominions big problem with Newsmax is they could put him out of business tomorrow, but actually they would like to bleed as much money out of them as they can, which requires them continuing to be in business. Fox, we're back to the basic dilemma, which is that they're captives of Donald Trump, that they, you know, there's incredible emails from Rupert Murdoch saying, we will make Donald Trump a non-person. He was being interviewed last week on there with Tucker. You know, it just sort of behaving sort of worshipfully to him. And I think, you know, the thing is that like the Republican Party, like they're captive to Trump, he...”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think they learned the narrowest imaginable lesson. Like, don't defame voting machine companies. If you're going to lie on air, make sure you don't specify who you're lying about and make sure it's not a commercial entity that can sue us. Keep it to public figures”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, although, I mean, that said, Dominion really did a service to the world. I mean, the internal workings of Fox News are like genuinely shocking and appalling to anybody who works in news. That is not what MyNewsRember worked like. It's not what your newsroom ever worked like. I mean, it is as bad as you would have imagined in terms of their disguising a willingness to deceive their audience in the language of respecting their audience. I mean, really pretty shocking.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think the notion that the dominion and its private equity owners were our champions fighting for justice and they betrayed us is ludicrous.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's a lot of money. Nobody has any fun writing that check, and there's probably another one coming to Smart Matic. It's an ongoing business headache, but you know what? Like, this is a company that survives and thrives on this kind of nonsense. And so”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, there's a great William Gaddis line. You get justice in the next world. In this world, you have the law. I mean, I think obviously money is accountability, but it's not. This isn't some kind of reckoning, the final blow that, you know, I mean, I do think that that waits for the next world.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, it's a tough day to feel particularly optimistic, although, but I mean, I'm sitting here in Semaphore's newsroom with a really small team feeling really good about what we're doing. And I do think that, and this is a mixed blessing for the industry, but there is this new space for star reporters to really, really cut through on their own terms and write their own tickets. And that's what you're building on, what we're trying to build on. I think that's in some ways a big challenge for lots of the industry, but a big opportunity too.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I don't really think so. I mean, I mean, the notion that, well, 93-year-old Rupert Murdoch has learned his lesson now. It's going to turn things around. I mean, come on.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think they're really interesting. I think their ability to cross promote newsletters is pretty cool, and I'm a little jealous of it. I think the question of like, if they built something more than an email service provider that's a competitor of something like Ghost is going to continue to be the big challenge for them, and can they basically build businesses that make a lot of money on those platforms and then not have them just immediately turn around and leave the platform? They've been doing an okay job at that so far, but I think that's a big, long-term challenge. Can that be a business that reflects its valuation? I don't know.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, I gotta say, NBCU, like when Caesar Conde came in, there was this sense of like, ah, here come the suits. But, like, the suits are doing a pretty good low drama job. They did not make the mistakes everybody else made with S-Fod, and they went with an advertising supportive streaming service. I think that if you look across the landscape of TV, that's the one place that feels like a very stable strategically focused place.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a lot to say about that. I do think one of the challenges is that it's been a very, very slow six months of news. And the best thing that could possibly happen for CNN is the return of America's toxic, crazy politics, which does seem to be happening.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Figure out the morning. Yeah, I asked. I asked Chris about Don when Don was in the room. I know that was seated directly in my line of sight. It was an awkward moment.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and I think the subscription business, that arrow just doesn't keep coming up into the right, it gets harder and harder.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, they're spending too much money. They got themselves to a place where subscriptions had been growing very healthily and the arrow pointed upward. And if the economy goes into a recession, they build a huge organization, basically a very healthy business, but they do have a lot, a lot of people.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think the curse of having a billionaire owner is the lack of pressure on one hand to build a business, but really to connect with an audience and serve people. And I think they're currently strategically really adrift as a result.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I mean, I think it's actually pushing us to develop more direct connections with our audience. And to find people who want to read our work and not go through other people's algorithms to do it, that feels healthy to me and the pendulum always swings in this business and people get audiences get tired of one thing and interested in another thing. So I don't think it's, but I think that feels like a healthy shift right now.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Oh, sure, but if somebody says we found people who died of mold in your living room and you say it's not an acceptable defense that that's not true, and here's some mold.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It was indicative of all these things, but somebody writes a story about you that's not true, and your defense can't be, it's indicative.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, and have their own pretty crazy ideology about how media works that was in some ways a kind of crazy mirror image of the dumbest things that journalists wrote about technology. I mean, I go, you know, I do think like, You go back to that Cambridge Analytica story. And that was basically nonsense. It was indicative of real problems and it was metaphorical for real problems. But the basic thrust of the story was that Cambridge Analytica had a meaningful impact on American elections, and that was not the case.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so they're allowed to be. But I do think Twitter did this in a way. They spent all their time on Twitter and developed their own totally Twitter sederic ideology of like what the media is and how it works that was actually just inaccurate. I mean, the notion that journalists”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They only saw the most irresponsible and worst stories because Twitter is a machine for elevating the dumbest stuff your enemies say.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are the victims. They're in pain. I do think the much narrower thing that reporters came to buy a set of ideologies about tech and wrote a bunch of nonsense stories. I mean, lots of journalism is wrong. I mean, and it's a flawed profession. It always has been. I do think the narrative that all society's ills were about. Tech companies was overblown. Entrepreneurs and Silicon Valley are right to be pissed off about that. I think they then developed a kind of mirror image.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“That's totally bizarre. Honestly, I think that there's this sort of weird reverse class resentment by billionaires of working people in this area.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, could Twitter become something like that? I think that's sort of where it's headed for somewhat different communities. And then also the incredible place to watch sports.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Not a good thing if what you care about as I do is trusted, careful, verified journalism. But I also think that a less relevant Twitter that is a place where people have great conversations about AI and tech as they continue to, that you know that much of what's on there isn't true, but that's sort of caveat emptor. I mean, like, for instance, I think Reddit is wonderful. part of the media ecosystem. Nobody says, well, Reddit is where you get trusted news, although sometimes there's incredible trustworthy stuff on Reddit.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think he sees Twitter as a news organization and is, I'm not sure he would put it exactly this way, but yeah, he's trying to damage his competitors and drive them off his platform. And I think we'll certainly succeed at that.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Make it up in volume. And then at some point the numerator gets so low that it doesn't matter what the denominator is or vice versa, whichever, but the But you couldn't make it up in volume because Facebook and Google provided effectively infinite scale.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I mean, I think traffic was the commodity that people like Jonah, like Nick Denton, who founded Gawker. Like you and me, felt like we had sort of discovered. And I remember putting the first kind of tracker on my website and watching it come in. And, you know, basically the business model for all these companies was you could sell advertising because you had traffic. And then the problem was that the value of each page view kept going down. And for a while, it's like, well, each page view used to be worth a dime and now it's worth a penny, but we're getting 20 times as many as we used to. So it's okay. And we can crank harder and harder and harder and still make it up in volume.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“In the run up to the 2016 election to see Steve Bannon. And he had been obviously studied buzzfeed incredibly closely when he was creating Breitbart. And one thing was he was like, I don't understand why you guys didn't just go all in for Bernie Sanders. I mean, that's where the traffic was. Which was true, by the way, that that's where the traffic was, and had had folks in the BusVe data side say, Why aren't we going all in for Bernie Sanders? Like, well, we're journalists. We don't go all in. And he just kind of shook his head at me like, What are you doing? What's wrong with you?”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And yet you go back and it's like, huh, Andrew Breitbart was one of the co founders of HuffPost, the founder of 4chan worked out of the BuzzFeed office. Steve Bannon is hanging around that story. You know, the founder of the Proud Boys was over advice and was pals with the women who founded Jezebel. And the sort of origins of the far right are just right, right next to that story. They're like sitting at the same desk and learning without the sort of establishmentarian like, well, we still have some rules kind of feelings that I, for instance, brought to it. And I think what I sort of realized was like, oh, actually, the real culmination of this period is the election of Donald Trump, not the election of Barack Obama. I write about this in the book, but I went over to Trump Tower.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT