From an Alex Kantrowitz interview with New York Times columnists Ben Smith on onezero.medium.com:
As the Media Equation columnist at the New York Times, Ben Smith is covering an industry going through transformation and turbulence. And as the former editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News — a place I worked until this June — he lived that change while managing a newsroom of reporters who lived online in a VC funded media company.
In this week’s edition of the Big Technology Podcast, I caught up with Smith for a discussion focused on how tech is changing journalism, what media companies can do to connect with people that have shut them out, and where big tech regulation may lead. . . .
At the New York Times, do you think Slack and Twitter are increasing or decreasing the range of ideas and perspectives that show up in the paper?
Twitter is the most incredible, fast, effective, centralized public square there has ever been in the history of the world by far and is a dream for journalists in a lot of ways just in that you find out the news really fast.
It also can really keep you honest. You can’t just go out there and bullshit the way you used to be able to. But as you say, there’s also this incredible peer pressure and pressure for conformity that has always, always been there in journalism but is blunter, and there’s more enforcement of it now.
I think people can be afraid to get away from the pack when really the best reporting usually is away from the pack. There’s a lot of different factors in that. There’s a limit to how many counterintuitive takes Donald Trump really permits. . . .
There are people who believe that the Times’ focus is narrowing or its perspective is narrowing, where it’s only reflecting a small percentage of the population. I’m thinking about the axes, for instance, that were reportedly put next to Bari Weiss’ name.
Brutal internal politics did not arrive with Slack, right? The New York Times has had brutal internal politics for a long time. And I think this is true. It’s hard to disentangle the medium from the message, and I think it is certainly true that Slack can accelerate and expose certain kinds of conversations that might have been happening anyway.
Then, on the other hand, we live in this incredibly intense political moment, and that’s not fundamentally because of Slack. But the same forces that are playing out everywhere else in the culture and the same arguments that are playing out everywhere else in the culture are playing out in the New York Times, which is just another institution full of human beings. . . .
Do you feel more comfortable at the New York Times than you did at BuzzFeed? What’s the difference been like for you?
No, of course not. BuzzFeed, I really was involved in creating, and it was this incredible place, and I had such a wonderful time there and really loved the people. And the Times is this giant institution where I barely know anybody, and it’s a very intimidating place, but really, totally fascinating and has all this history. So it’s hard to compare them from my perspective. . . .
So much of the media industry is people getting together and having parties and stuff like that. And you’ve written some critical stories about some big figures in the industry, including Troy Young and Ronan Farrow. Does the fact that we’re all home, has that helped you a little bit?
I don’t think I ever worried too much about being invited to parties, and people don’t invite me that much because they don’t like — they always worry that I’ll write something, which God forbid.
The working from home thing, it seems like you’re totally physically removed…
People feel safer talking about their institutions to reporters because their bosses aren’t physically hanging around, right? That’s interesting.
And at the same time, I do think that you can get to an internal toxicity inside an institution faster and people — it’s just easier to manage and to get along with your colleagues when you’re not totally exhausted, when you can make eye contact. I do think it’s wearing on everybody, and it makes a lot of the human relationships harder. . . .
What about when it comes to reporters talking more broadly about their political views? Pew research found the New York Times, when it comes to political and election news, is distrusted by 42% of Republicans, and the Washington Post is distrusted by 39% of Republicans. Is a broader foregrounding of individual reporters’ politics will continue to erode that trust?
Numbers about Republican trust and journalism historically have been bad. But also, obviously, the main contributor to them is the leader of their party attacking journalism a lot.
I also wonder, if we’re going to look at a moment of introspection, is there anything the press can do to bridge that disconnect?
I think that’s a great question. It’s not the only disconnect, right? I think a lot of poor people aren’t really spoken to by the mainstream press. I think there are lots of groups that are left out.
And I think the question of does the press — and by the press, I guess we’re saying the Washington Post, the New York Times, CNN, these big central institutions — do we think they go broader right now, that they cast a wider cultural net? Everything I see is that they are narrowing but that there is space for new institutions to speak to different groups of people, which I’m not sure is healthy for a democratic society. I think you see this splintering continuing to happen. But I think parts of that question don’t totally make sense in the context of what’s actually happening right now.
That said, if you had a leader of the Republican Party who lied less and respected the media, I think that person could probably change those numbers a bit, and that would be great.
You mentioned there are different institutions that could come up and fill that void. I’m looking at the conspiracy theorists and the fringe news sites that have become these beacons for people who feel like the mainstream news organizations aren’t speaking their language. So where does that go?
I don’t know. I think that there’s always been a market for inflammatory lies and that it’s thriving out there and that there are these incredible distribution mechanisms for it on Facebook in particular. But on the other hand, those are not good businesses. They exist mostly because a lot of people are funding them for ideological reasons.
It does seem like the media isn’t heard by a good portion of the population. How does that change? Because I don’t think that this is something we’re going to want to persist forever. It seems like a dark moment.
I don’t anticipate dramatic changes there. These are all publications that are strengthening their paywalls, that if they could get 1–2% percent of the American people to subscribe to them, that would be a huge triumph. But that’s where they’re trying to get to, maybe 3%, 4%.
I’m not sure there is a unified media. Fox News speaks to a lot of people, CNN. I just don’t really see a path toward a recentralization here. Maybe you do. But to me, it’s just obvious that you have these big institutions getting bigger but still within the context of a subscription business that — the Times, I think, what’s their goal? Ten million subscribers, which is one in 30 Americans? That would be an incredible — that’s their stretch. That’s a very, very ambitious goal. And it still leaves out the vast, vast majority of people. . . .
Before we go, one of my favorite things at BuzzFeed was to ask you where you think the big stories are going to be next. What do you think people should be looking at?
I don’t know when you’re going to post this. We’re talking on the day Donald Trump got coronavirus, and I haven’t been this utterly riveted by a story for a while. I don’t think there’s anything happening other than the election for a little while now. And in fact, we’re in that very frustrating period for journalists when everything you write is going to be just swept away in the noisy, screaming craziness.
Excellent interview with a very savvy thinker.