Welcome to Inside the Hive. My name is Joe Hagan, and I am here with Emily Jane Fox.

It's been a while.

I feel like it has been a while. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to speak to you to

see you to get into this, and I'm happy to hear your interview this week.

Ben Smith, co-founder, editor-in-chief of something called Semaphore.

Have you heard of Semaphore?

I have, because I exist in the media landscape, and it feels like people are talking about it.

So just give me the lay of the land. Your conversation, Ben Smith, has been a voice

in media for many years, and someone whose columns we paid attention to at the New York Times.

And now, at Semaphore, I know we're getting more of that. So what did you guys get to chat about?

Well, we talk about a lot about his opening column on Semaphore.

He's got a media column that he's established that is basically a continuation

of what he did at the New York Times, but this one is about the New York Times.

And it's something of a critique of it and a analysis of it as a business.

And I ask him about that to the point that he gets a little irritated,

which is always an interesting moment where a reporter is irritating another reporter

because of the questioning.

But I should establish right at the upfront that I've known Ben Smith for years,

and we used to sit next to each other at a place called the New York Observer many years ago.

As you know, a newspaper now owned by one Jared Kushner.

At the time, it was not.

But the thing that I have always observed about Ben through his many stages from Politico to Buzzfeed to New York Times,

...