LinkedIn Presents.

Welcome to Big Technology Podcast, a show for cool-headed, nuanced conversation of the tech world

and beyond.

Ben Smith is our guest today.

He's the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Semaphore. He's also the author of Traffic, Genius,

rivalry, and delusion in the billion-dollar race to go viral, which is coming out in May and already

available for pre-order, and he's formerly the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, where I work for him

for five years.

Now, so much of our information, so much of our news, is mediated by technology, and that tech,

in many ways, determines the quality of what we see. News organizations respond to incentives,

and when those incentives go away, they shift gears. When Ben and I worked at BuzzFeed, it seemed like the future of

news would flow through social media platforms. But now, the news is increasingly moving

through different channels like podcasts and newsletters and the web, and Ben's new organization

semifor is adapting. I wanted to speak with Ben about this shift for a discussion that I hope

would be interesting to anyone who consumes content or creates it and anyone who's thinking about building an audience.

We also analyze some news in the second half, and that's really fun, so stay tuned for that.

My conversation with Ben Smith right after this.

Will AI improve our lives or exterminate the species?

What would it take to abolish poverty?

Are you eating enough fermented foods?

These are some of the questions we've tackled recently on the next big idea.

I'm Rufus Griscombe, and every week I sit down with the world's leading thinkers for in-depth conversations

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