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Mo News

How The Race To Go Viral Impacted The News: Interview with Ben Smith

Mo News

@mosheh / tentwentytwo

News, Daily News, News Commentary

4.92K Ratings

🗓️ 15 May 2023

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this episode, we explore the recent history of the news media, the impact of Facebook and Twitter with longtime journalist and media entrepreneur, Ben Smith.  In his new book, Traffic, he effectively writes the history of 21st century media, exploring the rise and fall of digital news media innovators like Gawker, HuffPost, Breitbart and Buzzfeed. Mosheh and Ben discuss why the pursuit of “going viral” led digital media astray (Vice and Buzzfeed News recently collapsed) and its overall impact on American politics. — Mosheh Oinounou (@mosheh) is an Emmy and Murrow award-winning journalist. He has 20 years of experience at networks including Fox News, Bloomberg Television and CBS News, where he was the executive producer of the CBS Evening News and launched the network's 24 hour news channel. He founded the @mosheh Instagram news account in 2020 and the Mo News podcast and newsletter in 2022. Follow Mo News on all platforms: Website: www.mo.news Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mosheh/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/mosheh Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MoshehNews Snapchat: https://t.snapchat.com/pO9xpLY9 Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/moshehnews TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@mosheh

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Mo news podcast. I'm Mo Shunu. We have another great

0:08.6

interview for you today. I'm really excited about our guest Ben Smith. He's an award-winning

0:13.8

journalist, media entrepreneur. You might know him from his coverage of New York City politics

0:20.0

back in the day. He then went on to Politico, forming one of the most influential blogs there.

0:25.6

When blogging was hot about 15, 16 years ago, he then went on to become the founding editor-in-chief

0:31.6

of BuzzFeed News, a New York Times media columnist after that, and now the co-founder of the media

0:37.6

company Semaphore. Ben has a new book out called Traffic. It's all about the rise of internet news

0:44.7

over the last 20 years. Drudge report, Gawker, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, the backstory of the websites

0:52.6

and the characters who developed them. Really fascinating behind-the-scenes stories of Steve

0:57.3

Bannon, Ariana Huffington, how the media and its rise impacted politics, how new media,

1:04.9

digital media, and legacy media have been competing and who's winning today. The role social media

1:10.9

played in everything. Mark Zuckerberg, Jack Dorsey, Twitter, Facebook. How it effectively broke the media,

1:16.4

broke politics. Again, where things stand today? Ben and I go back to covering politics in Washington

1:22.4

in the mid-2000s and we talk about how things have evolved over the last few years and where

1:27.6

things might go next. We began the conversation as we taped it just after the White House correspondents

1:32.9

weekend where he had spent a lot of time with media executives, especially in the fallout in recent

1:38.2

weeks of Vice, BuzzFeed, a number of the media darlings of the past few years announcing that they

1:44.5

were either shutting down their doors or announcing major layoffs. Before we start here,

1:49.2

our reminder that we just launched Mo News Premium. It gives you early access to interviews like

1:54.5

this, ahead of everybody else, extra content on a private podcast page as well as a private

2:01.1

Instagram account. It's a way to support what we're doing here at Mo News, independent journalism,

2:06.4

help us continue to keep doing what we're doing and grow what we're doing. You can check that out

...

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