It's about ethics in journalism, with Ben Smith

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**Nilay Patel** (1:43)
Hello, and welcome to Decoder. I'm Nilay Patel, Editor-in-Chief for The Verge, and Decoder is my show about big ideas and other problems. Today, I'm talking to Ben Smith, the Editor-in-Chief of Semafor. Everywhere you go, people say they don't trust the media, and yet they've never consumed more of it. Audiences have moved on from legacy names in favor of sub-stacks and podcasts and TikTok news influencers that seem to be everywhere in our feeds. Why would anyone want to start a new global news organization in the middle of all that, when even once-storied brands like CBS News can't seem to figure it out? Well, that's what Ben did four years ago. He's the guy who ran BuzzFeed News at the height of the Facebook traffic boom. He even wrote a book about it called Traffic, which he discussed with me here on Decoder back in 2023 That was around the time he'd co-founded Semafor, which launched with the stated goal of reaching 200 million college-educated readers. You're going to hear Ben say that since then, Semafor has evolved into what he calls an anti-scale company. It still doesn't have a website paywall, but it makes about half its money in the convening business. That's what media types have taken to calling events lately. And Semafor throws some big events. They actually have a new one called Silicon Valley & The World, which will feature some of the biggest names in tech and AI. That's part of the events business, having the people on that you cover. So I wanted to know how that all works, and what it feels like to navigate the ethical conflicts that seem to be everywhere in media right now. How Semafor's newsroom is approaching AI, the ethics and the optics of putting the people you cover on your conference advisory boards, and whether independence is something an audience still even wants to pay for. Ben and I talk about these things a lot, usually over beers. And I think you'll be able to tell we really enjoy getting into the weeds of all this together. I hope you enjoy this conversation. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel to get new episodes every Monday and Thursday. All right, Ben Smith, Editor-in-Chief of Semafor. Here we go.
Ben Smith, you're the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semafor. Welcome back to Decoder.

**Ben Smith** (3:41)
It is really nice to be back.

**Nilay Patel** (3:43)
I'm excited to talk to you. You were on the show three years ago, just as Semafor was launching. It was right as BuzzFeed News, which you founded and ran for a long time, was shutting down.
I keep talking to media CEOs about what is going to happen. It feels like you have figured something out at Semafor. How are things going over there?

**Ben Smith** (4:00)
You know, things are going incredibly well. And I like knock on wood as I say that. But I do think that, I don't know if we, I mean, I think we figured something out. I think there are a lot of different things to figure out. We're in this unbelievably strange and unstable moment in media. But I do think we figured out a model that is, you know, quality journalism built around great journalists paired with really large scale convening that is building both great journalism and a really good business, a profitable business, which is something that is to me, as a former BuzzFeed executive novel.