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

“Yeah, maybe not a straight line. Perhaps it was zigzaggy BuzzFeed logo line. Yeah, I mean, I guess the thing that surprised me most in reporting out the book, which was like a lot about parts of media history that I had been a little next to and interested in, but not there. I wasn't invited to the golfer parties. Like I was a young political reporter in New York. I kind of knew about them and wished I was invited. But going back to talking to everybody in that era, one of the things that really, really surprised me was, you know, these were mostly people, I think Jonah certainly who see, you know, a lot of people around Gawker, who see themselves really as progressives. Huffington Post was created really specifically to elect a democratic political candidate in 2008. And they boosted Barack Obama through the primary. And in some sense, it felt like the election of Barack Obama was the culmination of this new wave of progressive online 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, this is the most strange and maddening thing for an internet person about writing a book, which is that you can't, I just want to go, like, yes, I would love to go in and fix it. I do think, though, I mean, the book is basically about. The end of an era. And I did feel like it was the right moment to write it because it felt like that era was ending. There's this period, you know, maybe 2001 to maybe 2020 that feels like a defined era of this new kind of media that influenced and Everyone else and was absorbed everywhere, particularly by the New York Times actually.”
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 unions are really good at protecting people on the downside. I mean, they're sort of built for, in this case, for a kind of downside scenario. And I think a lot of the reason people joined was they felt like it was just going to. A lot of the thing that they were focused on was protections in the case of layoffs and getting severance and things like 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
“The worst kinds of sort of journalistic traditionalism, sort of pointless old rules. And I think we got people who were really ambitious journalists who were interested in telling new stories and doing it in new ways. And so we just, I think we were incredibly early to these huge stories about the rise of the far right, thinking about the reporting on Milo Yiannopoulos and things like that, to a kind of international coverage that was about how the experiences of young people in different countries on the same platforms had really started to converge. There's a story by Nishita Jab about a sexual assault in India. That still sticks with me as one of these things that only that newsroom could have told.”
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 think at its best it was, you know, this generationally new thing that was able to, partly because people thought the brand was so ridiculous that nobody, you weren't going to get people there who were totally wedded to.”
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 say They either need to understand business better or be incredible at their jobs because that's the business, and that's a good way to understand business better.”
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 were a mid senior person at Time Inc. in the early 2000s, you were just totally screwed. And it wasn't because you were an idiot or you'd made some misstep. I do think for people coming up in this environment, you've got to look around and see what's happening. But at the same time, good reporters mostly are not particularly interested in or focused on the media business. They're interested and focused on their beats. And they want to be basically left alone to pursue them. And I think that's sort of what good news institutions ought to do is not say like, well, you're really an entrepreneur who ought to be thinking about the P&L all day.”
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 folks have sort of your and my generation kind of did see how unstable it was. I mean, I always felt that there were reporters a generation ahead of me who had done everything right and had gotten to successful places in their mid-40s and then had the rug ripped out from under them. And there's really nothing they could do.”
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 don't think anyone thought their job was guaranteed or took anything for granted. I think everybody there was sort of eyes wide open about how perilous it was. But yeah, I feel tons of responsibility to the folks who are still there. Just, I don't know. I mean, I sort of think once you've edited somebody, you're always in some ways. Responsible for them. I was, and that, you know, the core job of an editor in some ways just to have their reporters back. And I definitely sort of feel that for people I don't work with 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
“We have this opportunity to build a newsroom totally rooted in this moment and hire great reporters and do great work. And I mean, that was. I wasn't hired for my business savvy. I was hired to do that. And I think I'm very proud of what we did”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Different, you know, I mean, it's so easy to say knowing now what was going to happen to social media that we should have been obsessively focused with moving off of social media. And I think, you know, at some point that did kind of dawn on us, we started building newsletters. And I think the company much more successfully took audiences from Facebook over to YouTube. And looked at, like, are there ways to take all this scale we've built on social media and move it elsewhere? But I don't think we really totally grasp the urgency or the speed with which that ecosystem would collapse.”
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'm thinking in retrospect, Fox looks incredibly smart for not going public. And BuzzFeed went public through a SPAC and the process dragged until it was the absolute worst time possible to do it in all the capital they thought they were going to raise with us back went away. I mean, I think that when you pull back the camera here, like there are tons of tactical things that could have done differently of operating things, of kind of business decisions. But this was a company that mastered social media saw social media coming, lived in this whole world of social media that collapsed really, really fast around it. And I think that that's a very hard thing to overcome.”
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 mean that his employees? I mean, I think I do think that. There's a lot of public conflict around the union. That where inevitably it's a really adversarial relationship where management becomes a target. And I do think that. I think that definitely alienated him personally from the news department. And alienated a lot of journalists from him who are unhappy with how he handled it.”
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 just think they were, I mean, he'd been, you know, that was my mandate. Which we failed at I failed at, but not being particularly well qualified to do starting in 2018 or 2019. Yeah, I mean, I think they ran the company ran out of time.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Do you not It's very hard to focus on selling the harder thing to sell. And I guess I've sort of, you know, I'm in the lessons I've learned are really about like, you know, trying to build a news business where your partners on the business side are totally, totally focused on news and good at executing.”
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, in retrospect, as soon as anybody started talking about news as something we were doing because it was important to the world. I should have said, we got to cut costs, like that were inevitably.”
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, you always say you're not supposed to turn a profit when you're not turning a profit. And early on. We were a venture back company, so nothing was supposed to turn a profit if we were profitable, it was by accident.”
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 spent hours and hours talking to him for the book, and he's, you know, he's sort of a congenital optimist. And I think he has been very excited about what's next, about particularly AI and the uses of AI in media. But I do think he... I don't know. I think he'd bet really heavily on Facebook and on Mark Zuckerberg. You know, Busie was among the companies that took checks from Facebook, but really built its business on an organic relationship with Facebook and on a bet on this whole social media ecosystem. And I think it was pretty hard for us to imagine, particularly in 2014, that this was just going to go away.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Twitter losing its cultural relevance, partly just because social networks are like bars and clubs. They're cool when your friends are going there and then they're not. And so I think Elon has probably speeded the move away from news. But I think it was probably inevitable. And then meanwhile, publishers are and journalists are thinking a lot about just.”
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 BuzzFeed in some ways, among others, led the way for publishers to say, wow, Facebook and Twitter in particular provide in Facebook's case massive distribution, in Twitter's case, sort of a central beating heart of news and an elite conversation to penetrate. And journalists for individual reasons to build our brands, jumped in with both feet, publishers in varying degrees resisted or followed. But by, say, 2018, Facebook and Twitter are the most important parts of the news ecosystem. And then I think you've seen that collapse over the last few years. Facebook is obviously losing users, losing audience in a substantial way. And also as part of its way of combating that is pushing anything like resembles news or that resembles links out of the feed.”
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 that's to the degree anybody's on the web at all. I mean, I think you are spending a lot of time in audio and at events. I am spending all my time in newsletters and at events. I mean, these are alternatives to the web, basically, in other ways for people to get their news.”
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 I find myself in this weird moment where, like, when I want to know what's going on in the world, Twitter doesn't really do that anymore. Twitter tells you what Elon's thinking about, but it doesn't tell you what's happening in the world. And I found myself like, huh? Like I'm going to the drudge report Going to Huffen and post, these old internet behaviors that predate social media are kind of 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
“I'm not on the inside of that anymore, and I don't know. I mean, I do think to me one of the most interesting and strange things is, you know, when I was going back and reporting traffic huffing a post was this. Bold new digital entry that captured attention and dramatically. Upended media I think we then started to see it as this sort of legacy digital thing that was dying and it was sold to BuzzFeed. I think basically for less than a dollar. I think Verizon basically paid BuzzFeed to take it off its hands. And as the social web has receded and collapsed, I think what they found at BuzzFeed is that like, huh, like Huffenny and Post front page traffic stuck around.”
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 Jonah had been really attached to BuzzFeed News and loved it and, you know, I don't think we did a particularly good job of building a business around it. Maybe this is actually related to that and viewed it as something that was sort of a passion project, but ultimately investors had been pushing him for years to cut it because it was unprofitable. And when your stock's under a dollar, it's pretty hard to resist those pressures, which is where things are. And when it's hard to borrow money.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Facebook and other platforms responded by trying to start to push news out of their feeds because it was because people hated it. And I think BuzzFeed really lost its footing there and we never really recovered. Like we looked for ways to escape this ecosystem that I'm sure we made lots of mistakes.”
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, it's strange because I spent a couple years really spending a lot of time thinking about this period when I was writing this book. And Joan of I think maybe more successfully than anybody really like channeled this huge new surge of audience and attention and traffic coming from social media onto BuzzFeed. And we were in the year, you know, 2012, 2013, 2014. We had this theory, and people seem to like a website that mixed Disney Princess quizzes. And investigations and breaking news because that was kind of what your Facebook feed was like, and people liked that too. And then politics really intervened, like Facebook went from it being delightful that this was this mix of things to it becoming toxic.”
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 guess I'd say I'm shocked but not surprised. This was. In the cards for a long time. I mean, I think I was there from 2012 to 2020. And Jonah Peretti, who founded it, sort of saw social media coming. I mean, he really saw around this corner. It's the opening of your book.”
2023-04-24 · On with Kara Swisher · Ben Smith on the Turmoil at Buzzfeed, Fox News and Everything In Between · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT