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

Slate Culture Feed

Slate Podcasts

Music, Tv & Film, Arts

4.22K Ratings

🗓️ 29 April 2023

⏱️ 51 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

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. 

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Podcast production by Patrick Fort.


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Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello and welcome to the traffic episode of Slate Money, your guide to the

0:16.6

business and finance news of the week. I'm Felix Salmon of Axios. Emily Peck of

0:22.0

Axios is also here. Hi. We're joined by Elizabeth Spires, the editor of Gorker

0:27.2

amongst other things, or one of the former editors of Gorker. Hello. And we are

0:34.0

joined by Ben Smith. Ben Smith, welcome. Thank you for having me. Ben, you are

0:40.1

joining us on an auspicious day. We have all manner of median news in the world. We

0:47.7

obviously are going to talk about Tucker Carlson on this show. We're going to

0:51.4

talk about Buzzfeed News, which closed down. Buzzfeed News was started by you. You,

0:57.2

the former editor of Buzzfeed News, you have had a storied career at various

1:01.8

different media outlets. But what are you running now and introduce yourself? I'm

1:09.7

the editor-in-chief of Semaphora, a new news organization dedicated to

1:14.0

transparent journalism and to trying to help people navigate this very

1:18.5

complicated moment when it's very difficult to figure out who you can trust. And I'm

1:23.3

sort of caught between the moments because I've just finished writing this book. What

1:27.6

is the book? The book is called Traffic. And it's essentially the origin story of

1:33.4

this digital age, or at least of the digital age that just came and went, the

1:37.8

social media age. So we're going to talk about the book and all of the little

1:42.4

tentacles that have come out from it over the past week. It's all coming up on

2:17.0

the page and go to Pepsi.co.uk forward slash FAQ.

2:21.8

This episode is brought to you by Comfort's Fabric Conditioner. The great thing about

2:26.4

podcasts is that there's such a variety to choose from. You can pick whatever suits

2:30.9

your vibe. With Comfort fragrances, it's the same. You could go classic with blue skies

...

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