Ben Smith on the End of an Era for Digital Media

Joe Weisenthal (0:10)

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Odd Lots Podcast. I'm Joe Weisenthal.

Tracy Alloway (0:15)

And I'm Tracy Alloway.

Joe Weisenthal (0:17)

Tracy, there's been a lot of media news, and it's a cliche, and I'm sure it's been repeated over and over again in headlines, but we're at the end of an era for the era of journalism that we both came up in.

Tracy Alloway (0:28)

I feel like before we start this episode, we should just get the disclaimer out right away, which is this is probably going to be our most navel-gazing episode ever.

Joe Weisenthal (0:39)

Yes, and I think we're even planning on releasing this as like a Friday bonus episode of the week, just to acknowledge that it's like, okay, if you don't want to know anything about the media business or Joe and Tracy or all these things that are sort of like endemic to their lives over the last decade, feel free to skip this one.

Tracy Alloway (0:57)

Yeah, this is media talking about the media, but you are right. There have been some things that have been happening lately. Specifically, we've seen BuzzFeed News announcing that it will be shutting down.

I think there was a report recently about Vice Media potentially filing for bankruptcy. It feels like the end of an era for a lot of these digital-focused media startups.

Joe Weisenthal (1:21)

No, I mean, it's definitely true. And as listeners do know, we both started our careers sort of in digital, basically, roughly the same time, basically right at the worst of the great financial crisis. And out of this period came all of these new experiments and upstart media companies that were supposed to dislodge the incumbent, the blog at FT.

Tracy Alloway (1:45)

The Financial Times, Alphaville, yep.

Joe Weisenthal (1:47)

I was at Insider, and Insider is still chugging. They recently, they did announce layoffs, but of all of the companies, maybe we'll talk about this, of all of the companies, I kind of feel like they're like the winner that nobody talks about in this whole thing.

Tracy Alloway (2:00)

I noticed you call it Insider and not its original name. Have you just erased that from your mind?

Joe Weisenthal (2:05)

Do you know what the original name was?

Tracy Alloway (2:06)

Was it not Cluster Stock?

Joe Weisenthal (2:08)

It was, yeah.

Tracy Alloway (2:09)

Yeah, Cluster Stock.

Joe Weisenthal (2:10)

Because everyone was like our business insider, but we had names even before then. And even before then was Silicon Alley Insider. Anyway, it's a pretty pivotal time, and I guess the question for all, was this all a zerg phenomenon, or was this something else, or what was going on there?

Tracy Alloway (2:25)

Well, I think there is an overlap with some of the bigger, I might be reaching here, but I think there is an overlap with some of the bigger themes we've been talking about recently, which is, I guess, the sort of attrition of tech, or the tech strains that we've seen, and the thing that digital media has in common with a lot of the tech industry has to be venture capital financing. It has to be, there was a story about what was going to happen in the digital media market.

People talked about these big numbers, huge audiences that could now be reached through online publishing, so it feels like there is some overlap there.

Joe Weisenthal (3:02)

Yeah, and of course, when I was at Business Insider, there was a really intense pressure month after month to hit new traffic goals.

And part of that was clearly ad sales, right? They're sort of on some level of function of traffic, but I think the other thing is they're a function of telling a story to your investors for your next round.

Tracy Alloway (3:23)

Yeah, you have lots of lines going up.

Joe Weisenthal (3:25)

Lots of lines, and so regardless of whether you're actually profitable or not at any given moment, if the lines are up, you can live because you can get that next round of funding into the line.

Tracy Alloway (3:33)

Classic tech growth story.

Joe Weisenthal (3:34)

Exactly.

Well, we're going to talk all about this because we're going to be speaking with Ben Smith. He is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of Semafor. Previously, he was a media columnist at the New York Times, and previous to that, he was the editor-in-chief at the aforementioned BuzzFeed News, which changed the world, and he's the author of the new book, Traffic, Genius, Rivalry, and the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral. So, Ben, thank you so much for coming on Odd Lots.