Buzz Killed: Who’s winning the viral news war?

The Bunker – News without the nonsense

Podmasters

News, Government, Politics, Society & Culture

4.6 • 1K Ratings

🗓️ 29 June 2023

⏱️ 22 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

The news media is driven by clicks more than ever before. Who is winning the war for online attention? Brands like Vice and Gawker initially won the race – but are old-school papers dominating the online space again now? Ben Smith is the former editor-in-chief for Buzzfeed News, runs the news outlet Semafor, and is author of Traffic: Genius, rivalry, and delusion in the billion-dollar race to go viral. He joins Jacob Jarvis in The Bunker. “If you were a journalist covering politics in the mid-’00s, the online space was really exciting.” – Ben Smith “I don’t think you were doing anything called ‘going viral’ until Twitter came along.” – Ben Smith “The NY Times really absorbed a lot of the lessons and the culture of the internet.” – Ben Smith www.patreon.com/bunkercast Written and presented by managing editor Jacob Jarvis. Producer: Chris Jones. Audio production: Simon Williams. Music by Kenny Dickinson. Group Editor: Andrew Harrison. THE BUNKER is a Podmasters Production Instagram | Twitter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	My name is Stan. I'm at. Nice to meet you. So you took up photography where? I've always loved
0:05.5	photography but I turn it into earning a living at 60. I enrolled on a day course.
0:11.8	Well college. I loved going to college. It's good you can retry. I'm enrolled on the day course. But college?
0:13.0	I loved going to college.
0:14.0	It's good you can retrain and do something.
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1:14.0	Every newsroom I worked in had huge screens on each wall with real-time charts showing how many people were reading stories on the site.
1:22.0	Then every month reports would go around
1:24.4	showing which journalist was the most clicked on for that period and even if it felt
1:28.9	to boo to admit it everyone wanted to be top. When it came to drawing in traffic, upstarts like
1:35.6	gorker, Buzzfeed, Vice and the Huffington Post became the masters of that
1:40.2	particular skill, leaving legacy News Brands lagging behind.
1:44.7	But now the tables feel like they've turned, with many of those sites struggling and old school
1:48.8	newspapers dominating online news once again. Ben Smith used to be editor-in-chief for Butts Feed News,
1:55.0	was then a media columnist for the New York Times
	...

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