By Steve KrakauerFor this week’s “BCC” interview, I emailed with New York Times media columnist and former BuzzFeed editor Ben Smith. I’ve been an admirer of Smith for years – his move to BuzzFeed was the first real digital domino to fall. That said, there’s a lot we don’t agree on.
Below is the full email exchange between myself and Smith. Click here for my “BCC Interview” with Vox’s Jane Coaston or here for my interview with MSNBC’s Ali Velshi. And click here to subscribe to the Fourth Watch newsletter.
From: Steve Krakauer
To: Ben Smith
Hey Ben-
Thanks for doing this!
I wanted to start with what everyone is talking about now and for the foreseeable future – coronavirus. You wrote about the way Fox News has covered the story, in the past and now. I’m curious as you look out across the rest of the media landscape, how do you think the media is covering this crisis currently? As we are now dealing with daily briefings, much of which features the media and Trump battling it out over the fight of the day, are you finding the media properly serving the public, generally?
Another column you’ve written recently, which I also agreed with, was that social networks, like Facebook and YouTube have actually been useful in disseminating information during the coronavirus crisis, and not, as they are often accused of, passing along “fake news.” Do you think this moment of “social distancing” gives social networks the opportunity to regain their reputation?
OH – and how’s the Times?! Ok, we’ll get to that next email.
Steve
From: Ben Smith
To: Steve Krakauer
Hey Steve,
I’m not totally comfortable with the role of media ref — I’m new to this gig — but I think that most journalists and outlets now are really trying to play a vital role for their audiences and for public health. I do think that some of our instincts in this politicized moment can really lead us astray, and that happened most disastrously at Fox News, where many of their hosts are so used to covering every story and a media/Democrats-attack-Trump story that they put the political story ahead of the public health story. But I think you see reflexes like that broadly across media, and that none of us have ever covered anything like this and it’s hard. As for the daily briefings, when I was at BuzzFeed News the thing we thought about a lot was proportion. If Trump did some outrageous or misleading thing, you should cover it — but you shouldn’t mistake it for the biggest story of the day.
I do think that you’ve seen the platforms behave relatively responsibly, as I wrote. The first phase of that was really about them grounding themselves in the good information coming from public health authorities and not allowing the medical debate over coronavirus to be turned into a political story. That isn’t to say they’ll find dealing with political information and misinformation any easier, but this was both a sweet spot for them and a place where the work they’ve done in recent years to build moderation infrastructure paid off. And for me, at least, a lot of the media that woke me up early on was social media — epidemiologists on Twitter, doctors and nurses on Facebook and Reddit.
The next way for them to prove their value is, as you suggest, giving us something to do and a way to connect. TikTok is pretty great right now.
From: Steve Krakauer
To: Ben Smith
Hey Ben-
Let’s stick with Twitter, which you mention at the end. I’ve found the past two weeks to show some of the best of Twitter, and some of the worst. This feels like our first, real Twitter Era crisis, and I wonder how you think the media is handling this experience. Are they engaging in responsible ways on their favorite social media platform of choice? Is it just business as usual?
On another point, I wanted to talk about your recent move to the New York Times. When you originally joined BuzzFeed from Politico in 2012, people in the media, myself included, were stunned. It quickly became clear you were an early adopter, ahead of the curve when it came to digital media. In some ways, eight years later, this feels like the inverse – is this the beginning of a new, seismic media shift? On the biggest level, do you think what you built at BuzzFeed worked (and will continue to work when you’re gone)? Do you think it got too big, too fast? And what do you think your move from editor of a large digital-first publication to columnist at an enormous print-first publication says about the way the industry has moved?
Or – is thinking about this as an “industry move” missing the story – is it isolated to the New York Times, which has adapted to digital in a really impressive way over the past few years?
Ok I threw a bunch of questions at you… feel free to throw anything my way too.
Steve
From: Ben Smith
To: Steve Krakauer
I don’t think I really have any observations on Twitter beyond what you wrote. It’s obviously the central vein of news, but also — this is a slow-moving story, not a fast one, and Twitter encourages our short attention spans and impulse to look for the next story when for a while the next story is going to be same as the last story, so I think that’s worth being careful for.
As for BuzzFeed, I’m broadly optimistic about it. You can look at the work they’re doing right now which is great, fast, vital, smart, fun in this moment, and really connecting with a huge audience. They’re heading into the same period of uncertainty about revenue as almost everyone else in the economy though, and I know are trying their best to take care of their people.
As for my theories about the industry and the Times, I think I pretty much exhausted them in my first column …
From: Steve Krakauer
To: Ben Smith
Hey Ben-
Something else I’ve tried to wrestle with related to Twitter is the disparity between “industry” people I know who are on it and consume it regularly versus “normal” people I know, who largely never open the platform or do so very rarely. While the media, broadly, has made coverage of tweets a centerpiece (both Trump’s news-making ones and the general ‘here’s a few random tweets to make a trend’ stories) so consumers who aren’t on the platform are engaging with content there, I wonder how much of your coverage you think is for those who are outside the industry? In other words – as the lead media columnist for the New York Times, how much of what you write are you thinking will be for an audience outside of… New York?
Also, one thing you wrote about in your first piece was podcasts. I agree that the Times has been really smart in that area. What do you think is the future of the podcast industry? I feel like it’s at the early stages still, despite the fact that they’ve existed for 15 years. But more importantly, what are one or two podcasts in your regular rotation that may surprise people?
Thanks for doing this!
Steve
From: Ben Smith
To: Steve Krakauer
One of the things I like about Twitter is that it opens up the inside conversations, and reveals how much – or how little — insiders know, and opens it to how much outsiders know. Imagine if during the Iraq war we were seeing Iraqis’ tweets, or the tweets of skeptical weapons experts.
As for the media’s centrality in the conversation — I’m speaking against interest, but I think it’s too much. Trump’s politics are as much about the media as about any underlying social or economic realities.
And I think there’s going to be an amazing explosion of great audio during this huge wave of investment in it from places like Spotify. I just hope the platforms don’t utterly dominate and corporatize it, and squeeze out independent voices. I have eclectic tastes personally (and don’t listen to an enormous amount) but — I loved the French Revolution (by Mike Duncan), Michael Lewis’s Against the Rules, The Daily, Hayes Brown’s impeachment podcast and whatever he does next, Kara Swisher’s interviews, Sinica, Kara Swisher, Tina Brown’s and David Axelrod’s interviews. Also, the kids show Six Minutes. If anyone has more recommendations like that …