Slate Money: “Traffic”: Ben Smith and the Death of the Social Web

Slate Technology

Slate

Society & Culture, Technology, History

4.6 • 636 Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2023

⏱️ 50 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Felix Salmon, Emily Peck and Elizabeth Spiers are joined by Semafor editor-in-chief Ben Smith to discuss his new book. They also break down Tucker Carlson’s departure from Fox News and the end of Buzzfeed News. In the Plus: A throwback to the olden days of blogging. If you enjoy this show, please consider signing up for Slate Plus. Slate Plus members get an ad-free experience across the network and an additional segment of our show every week. You’ll also be supporting the work we do here on Slate Money. Sign up now at slate.com/moneyplus to help support our work. Podcast production by Patrick Fort. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello and welcome to the traffic episode of Slate Money, your guide to the business and finance
0:18.0	news of the week. I'm Felix Simon of Axios.
0:21.4	Emily Peck of Axios is also here.
0:23.5	Hi.
0:24.2	We're joined by Elizabeth Spires, the editor of Gawker, amongst other things.
0:29.1	Or one of the former editors of Gorker.
0:31.3	Hello.
0:32.5	And we are joined by Ben Smith.
0:35.1	Ben Smith, welcome.
0:36.9	Thank you for having me.
0:38.6	Ben, you are joining us on an auspicious day.
0:43.0	We have all manner of media news in the world.
0:47.6	We obviously are going to talk about Tucker Coulson on this show.
0:51.0	We're going to talk about BuzzFeed News, which closed down.
0:54.7	BuzzFeed News was started by you.
0:57.1	You are the former editor of BuzzFeed News.
0:59.1	You have had a storied career at various different media outlets.
1:04.2	But what are you running now and introduce yourself?
1:09.2	I'm the editor-in-chief of Semaphore, a new news organization dedicated to transparent
1:14.9	journalism and to trying to help people navigate this very complicated moment when it's very
1:20.6	difficult to figure out who you can trust.
1:22.6	And I'm sort of caught between the moments because I've just finished writing this book.
	...

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