From the Lever’s reader supported newsroom. This is Lever Time. 

I’m David Sirota. 

Have you ever thought to yourself in the last few years…where did everything go? 

When it comes to brick and mortar stuff in our communities, the disappearances have been apparent for decades. Independent stores, whether they sell food or books have been vanishing. Beloved neighborhood restaurants have been forced to close…but that trend also extends to the media we consume. 

In journalism, the media is to put it mildly in a state of crisis. In the past year outlets like Buzzfeed News have completely shut down while bedrocks of journalism like The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and NPR have gutted their newsrooms. 

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Regional newspapers, once the bedrock of their communities, have become shells of their glorious past – and private equity firms have literally torn them down and sold off the parts in an effort to get rich. 

That’s not to say that there isn’t some hope. Some outlets, like The Lever, have been able to grow and expand during this period of turmoil. And a new crop of independent journalists have been able to build major audiences by connecting directly with their readers. 

But do those gains negate the fact that we’re losing more and more journalists. Is this new media environment able to sustain the kind of rigorous investigative reporting that we’ve long taken for granted? And just what is the lesson of this moment? 

Today on Lever Time, I’m going to sit down with Ben Smith. Ben’s the co-founder and editor in chief of Semafor, and before that he was the media columnist for the New York Times, and the editor in chief of Buzzfeed News. 


Back in the day, some of the best journalism in the country came from local newspapers. Papers like the San Jose Mercury News or the Anchorage Daily News or my two hometown newspapers - The Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News. 

Up until the mid-2000s regional papers had the means to be powerhouses in their communities, and could afford to give reporters the space to dig into what was going on in places that don’t often attract the attention of national outlets. 

In 1995, the Raleigh News and Observer published an expose of the dangers of the state’s hog industry, leading to reform. 5 years later, in Ohio, the Dayton Daily News exposed malpractice that revealed a lack of accountability by the state’s medical board. 

Perhaps one of the more well known examples of this was the Boston Globe’s 2002 investigation into the Catholic Church’s efforts to cover-up sexual abuse by priests. An investigation that was memorialized by the movie Spotlight. 

[Spotlight clip]

This culture of local shoe-leather reporting was memorialized in one of my favorite films of all time - The Paper - in that scene where Michael Keaton, the editor of the gritty local paper, hustles to get a huge scoop, and then tells off his competitor on the national desk of the New York Times.

https://youtu.be/IUIROdr9SnE?t=46

:47-1:11 “Well, I hope you’re satisfied asshole…so go fuck yourself”

But today, that kind of local news hustle - all that competition for scoops and revelations that better inform the public - all of that is experiencing a slow death. When news went digital, these outlets lost their ad revenue, and to some people their relevance. Large papers like the Globe struggled to adapt to an era of belt-tightening, and if they weren’t bought by a private equity firm or billionaire, other papers just closed altogether. 

Now, Northwestern University estimates that more than half of the counties in America have either limited or no access to news coverage. 

What’s that mean to you? Well, for one thing, it means more corruption. One study found that when local newspapers close, it means higher borrowing costs for the local governments - politicians basically give away more money to Wall Street, knowing there’s no local newspaper to nail them on it. Another study found a rise in federal corruption charges when major newspapers close in a community - in other words, without local news coverage, corruption becomes so flagrant and rampant and out of control that the feds step in - and you can bet for every one time the feds do step in, there are 10 examples of more petty corruption going unreported, unnoticed, and unprosecuted. 

Corruption and a lack of insight about your community is one problem, but even national outlets can’t seem figure out how to stay afloat. 

The Washington Post, one of the most recognizable newspapers in the world, one that’s owned by one of the world’s wealthiest men, has been laying off staff for years – most recently they shrunk their newsroom by 240 people. 

Time Magazine, owned by the billionaire Marc Benioff, also cut their staff. So did the billionaire owned Los Angeles Times and Wall Street Journal. 

If it wasn’t bad enough that billionaires were buying up papers throughout the country, what feels even worse is that billionaires are allowing journalism to die while they’ve generated historic amounts of wealth for themselves. 

Yes, major media organizations have made many mistakes, and there is much to criticize about what they choose to cover, and how they cover it. It’s something we’ve covered extensively here at The Lever.

BUT, it should also be acknowledged that many of these papers have produced journalism that inspired positive reforms in government and society. Today, journalism – and I mean real journalism. Not op-eds or hot takes that are written in reaction to the news, but actual reporting, the kind that can hold the powerful accountable – that kind of journalism requires tenacity, time and resources. And it’s becoming harder to find. 

That’s not to say it’s completely dead. Some bigger outlets are still producing deeply reported pieces, and smaller, more nimble outfits like The Lever are trying to fill the void - and are growing, thanks to our paying subscribers. But still, will that be enough to fill the ever growing hole that is being created by the hollowing out of the news industry in the name of profit?

To answer that question, I called up journalist and Semafor founder Ben Smith, who I’ve known for years. Recently, Ben launched a podcast called Mixed Signals, and every week he tries to answer these same questions, chiefly: what is happening to the media today. Ben also wrote the recent book about the life and death of online journalism outlets called “Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral.”

We don’t agree on everything, but Ben’s time as an editor, a reporter and now the founder of a news outlet has allowed him to see the media industry from almost every angle. As the former editor in chief of Buzzfeed, for example, he played a major role in transforming a wacky internet start-up into a place that was home to Pulitzer Prize winning journalism. 

Now, you may be asking why any of this matters? Why are we talking about this?

It matters because journalism is a fundamental part of a functioning democracy. Without it, we as citizens are deprived of the ability to actually hold the centers of power accountable. And the media, even in a period of turmoil, is incredibly influential, and when it changes, that surely has downstream effects on the rest of our society.

So, now, here’s my conversation with Ben Smith. 




David Sirota: [00:00:00] Let's start with where, where we are right now. What your basic assessment of why so many major media outlets shuddered or underwent huge job cuts in the last, I don't know, year, 16 months, 18 months? I mean, it's been ongoing for a while, but it does feel like something accelerated in that time period.
Ben Smith: Well, first of all, per our previous discussion, I would like to take this, uh, this slot to plug my new podcast. Just kidding. But, but no, but seriously, um, I'm not paying you for it, but I would, um, Which is about a lot of these questions called mixed signals from semaphore. Um, but I do think, and the reason we launched it is because you see these things in media and you can't figure out why they are happening from what's promoted where.
But also too, right, like what is going on in news and why are there all these closures? And there's an impulse, I think, and journalists like loved a good like monocausal explanation. And so there was, there was a great line in the New [00:01:00] Yorker that this was an extinction level event for media. But I actually think what's happening, there are a couple different things happening in media.
And three quarters of it, in a certain way of speaking, is very positive. There are a lot of new things. There are a lot of small and medium sized outlets like yours and mine, on totally different lanes, trying to figure things out, trying to figure out new models. There are trade publications of all sorts, just absolutely thriving.
We're at a golden age of niche publications, if you want to News about Capitol Hill or about the waste management industry or about a million other things. It's never been better. Um, and there's a lot of national political coverage, national investigative reporting. And all of that is just subsumed in this massive wave that is the collapse of local news in America.
And which, which erases all those gains and way more. And so in a way there are two different stories. And one is, Lots of interesting green shoots and leaves, but the bigger one is just that local is still collapsing. What happened this year? Part of it was that some billionaires who had bailed out local publications a few years ago got bored.
And were like, this is annoying, I'm still [00:02:00] losing money. And that was what happened in Los Angeles, that's to some degree what happened in Washington. Um, And, and, and the struggles of local news, and I would say in the United States, it's actually not a global phenomenon, it's an American phenomenon. Are. You know, just, they're so dire.
David Sirota: The threat of billionaires getting bored Is as much a threat as billionaires steering the news, right? I mean, I think like there's, there's, there's the billionaire
Ben Smith: They might, they might be the same phenomenon,
David Sirota: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's the citizen Kane who is the billionaire using the news to, for their political agenda.
And then there's the billionaire who like dabbles like a little bit and then put, and then pulls out and creates, you know, there's no, there's no media stability when, when that happens. But, but I would also ask about the other, the other factor, which is, you Private equity, hedge funds, uh, the, the financialization of at least part of the news. Tell us your, your, your thoughts [00:03:00] of that. I mean, when you hear about that, I mean, I'm, I'm talking to you from Denver, right? Denver people think about hedge fund news. They think about the Denver Post and the, and the, the thinning out of the Denver Post at the hands of a hedge fund owner. What is all that about?
Do you think we're coming to the end of that, of that era? I mean, how much money is there left for them to out of
Ben Smith: I mean, let me give my priors here, which is I'm a person who often when I read, read the lever, I think, you know what, this is capitalism at work. God bless creative destruction. If the car wash industry or the veterinary industry is getting consolidated, maybe it's for the better. Who knows? Um, I think that this is a case where the consolidation and the sort of these chains, basically these chains in the early 2000s, Gannett, McClatchy, um, and then Alden being sort of the worst and bottom feeder of them, took on all this debt to buy up what I guess they thought at the time, although somebody should have told them otherwise, were going to be great businesses, and they were going to [00:04:00] create these You know, pulling these big consolidated businesses where they could share back ends and printing plants and they could produce great newspapers.
They weren't thinking, were our businesses collapsing and we're going out of business, they were thinking, let's borrow some money so we can build big businesses. And it was just an absolute catastrophe. And these companies took on debt that they couldn't handle in a declining industry, particularly after 2008 and are in just various stages on, you know, circling the drain.
and It's a specifically American story. It is not what happened in Asia. It's not what happened in Europe where you have chains, but they're family owned, um, you know, and, and are very focused on stability and continuity. You know, it's just like some, there was just, we got into this death spiral of debt and mismanagement and, um, pension, unfunded pension liabilities that, and, and very little help from the government specifically with the pension liabilities.
Um, that produce these zombie newspapers all over the
David Sirota: Well, so, so, if it, if, um, if there is an American [00:05:00] exceptionalism story here, uh, that, that we stand out, our media, uh, dystopia stands out from other, other other societies, why do you think that is?
Ben Smith: I mean this, I'm with you on this one. I think it was this rush to financialize and the, you know, this opportunity to borrow money at a huge scale and sort of and culture of and then particularly in the later stages figuring out that the real estate assets were more valuable than anything else and milking them.
Um, But, and I think it's, but I think, I think the newspapers industry is like, it's like the poster child for the lever. I disagree with you on a lot of the other ones, but I'm just totally with you on this
David Sirota: Yeah, yeah. Well, I, I then would ask, where do you think Where do you think we're headed? Or give us the two branches. There's like the, um, Back to the Future 2. They fly ahead to the future and it's like a complete dystopia. And then by the end of Back to the Future 2, where they fixed everything, there's the fly ahead to the [00:06:00] and everything's better.
So give us the two branches in your mind.
Ben Smith: Um, I mean, I, let's see, I think that the, I mean, there are these huge challenges that don't really have to do with news that overlay this. You know, the collapse in trust in institutions of all sorts. And so, and I, and I don't think that the news business caused that or it's going to fix it. It's obviously this huge macro social trend.
Um, I think when it comes to local news, the best case is sustainable local companies that are some mix of for profit and non profit, and a lot of them are, you know, For profit corporations that don't make any money or non profit corporations that are actually very well run and and and turn a profit just don't return to shareholders like I think that I think those models aren't as different as people say, um, the companies that are run you know for ultimately for the benefit of the city, not because it's the best business in the world, and that [00:07:00] rebuild, you know, never the scale of the old Indianapolis star where I started started out that had hundreds and hundreds of reporters like there's just not a business model for that.
And. the amount of money you'd have to extract from the local wealthy donors to build a paper on that scale, you would like regret, you know, you'd be working for them to too much, too great a degree. But I think there is an opportunity to rebuild just, but ultimately still on a smaller scale, in the best case, this kind of ground level local information ecosystem, which can feed up to the nationals.
Publications, and I think part of what you see now is we just live in this kind of fantasy land where there's so little reporting happening on the ground in localities that people get their information of what's happening in the country from four second clips on social media of somebody punching somebody, and, and no local reporter ever went out and figured out what happened.
But I think even like you saw around some of the campus protests, there was like a weird lack outside college newspapers, which are a funny little niche. Of just like, okay, what is happening? Who are these [00:08:00] people? When, like, when that guy was hitting that other guy with a stick, like, who were they? And it was just this sort of strange absence of that.
David Sirota: So here's what I worry about. Whether, I would actually, into this discussion. There's local news that's not happening or is being hollowed out. There's also a longer form, deep dive, longer lead time, investigative reporting that takes, you know, a lot of time and resources. Uh, these are both I think business challenges, and what I worry about is a media, I mean, there's a lot of, there's the corporatization of media, there's, but, but there's also this, we live in an information ecosystem where essentially what we're, I think what we're saying is, is that local media and or deep dive, long form, expensive, uh, investigative journalism is hard to get A return on investment is hard to make financially, uh, sustainable.
So there's this [00:09:00] kind of baked in, uh, incentive to do shorter form, uh, more shallow, um, uh, kind of clicky news. I'm using clicky as kind of, not, not to say it's all, all vapid, but it's just as a placeholder. And I worry that we get to a point where everything is surface level and none of the either hyperlocal or deep dive stuff actually Gets done because it's simply not a good business decision necessarily to, to fund it.
Is that a world we're going to live in? And I feel like there's a lot of downsides of that world.
Ben Smith: Well, if it's any consolation, the clicky stuff is also going out of business, too. With, um, but, AI's gonna do that for you. Um, yeah, I mean, I think, you know, big investigative reporting was in some ways always a luxury of a really great business. And the best and the best of the great newspaper.
Investigative reporting of the, you know, seventies, eighties, nineties was, you know, from places like the Toledo Blade was. The process was, was a product of the fact that Toledo Blade was like an amazing [00:10:00] business printing money, which they could go give to Mike s to go dig up Vietnam war crimes. Um, the, um.
You know, but there are new, I think that the national investigative reporting is probably more of it than there's ever been. ProPublica is this unbelievable juggernaut. There, there's this whole new culture and model of investigative, non profit investigative journalism that, you know, I would say maybe even a little more than the old newspaper journalism does bring with it a bit of, well, like, this is what we raised the money to do, and we kind of know who the good guys are and the bad guys are, and we're going to go get them, which can be good and can be bad, but is not, you know, is, is a, you know, It's a model that, like every model, and like, you know, comes with some challenges, but ultimately is pretty amazing, and I think there is a, it's just, the notion that news is an appropriate object for philanthropy is new, and has brought hundreds of millions of dollars, particularly into long form investigative reporting.
Sometimes the challenge of, will anybody read it? Where does it go? How does it have an impact if nobody reads it? It is a big, it is a big and kind of [00:11:00] unsolved challenge, because of course part of the power of those newspapers was not only did they produce this crazy investigation, they then just like shoved it in front of everybody in Toledo over breakfast.
David Sirota: Yeah. I mean, my, my, I've said this before, which is that my concern is, is that there's, More and more opinion riffing on, hot taking on, uh, less and less journalism, less and less, uh, certainly long form or, or deep dive investigative journalism. And I agree with you. There, there's still great investigative journalism being done.
But I, I, I'm, like, kind of concerned about, there's like more and more noise about, like, Less and less substance, if you will, and, and where that ultimately leads us, I, I don't, I just, I don't, I don't really know because I, I understand that the business. The business of journalism rewards the cheapest possible product in a lot of ways.
I mean, it's, it's just, it's, it's, it's easier to, it's less of a risk to try to monetize things that you're not spending a lot [00:12:00] on. And, and, and so what do we end up with? Lots of opinions, not, not that much reporting. I mean, you know, Talk me off the ledge here
Ben Smith: I mean, I, you know, I, I will not. The, but I, I mean, I do, and I, because I also think that, you know, I mean, the, the one, one thing that I think is basically positive is there's a proliferation of new models. There are kind of digital subscription businesses like yours, there are niche advertising businesses like mine, there are a bunch of people trying new things, um, but I think that news gathering, it's, I mean, you know, in some ways, when we were launching Semaphore, part of what we were thinking about was how do you create a model, you know, that is built, you know, that's sort of a, like, a substack like model for great beat reporters, but who, and I think you are, you guys are vanishingly unusual.
in doing a lot of original journalism in a subscription model, and it's because you've found a lane where people are really passionate about what you're covering, and because you have a point of view that you bring to stuff that your audience, kind of, at some, at some [00:13:00] very broad, appropriately broad level, buys into.
Um, if you're, you know, but if you're like us and you're trying, but there is this question of, like, an individual reporter who just likes to go out and break news, That's not a substack, because one day they're talking about this, the next day they're talking about that. One day they're beating up on the person you love, the next day the person you hate.
Like it's, it doesn't lend itself to that. And so, and, and by the way, they need lawyers and editors and a team. And so, I mean, when we were building Semaphore, we were definitely thinking like, how do you create the best of substack? We just say that kind of very direct, honest, open connection to an audience.
the best of an old newsroom, which is a level of support, a brand, an ability to not necessarily tell your audience what they want to hear all the time, because sometimes the facts don't match that. Um, and I think that's, that, that was sort of the beauty of the old ad supported newspaper business, that I think people like you and me are like, in our different ways, really straining to rebuild.
David Sirota: And look, I just want to add, I do not think as, and there are good sub stacks out there, [00:14:00] but I have been somebody who has passionately believed that sub stack. Or the sort of individual reporter going their own way is, is, it's fine, but that's not the solution because of what you just said. Like, institutions are necessary to do real journalism by virtue of the fact that you need editorial support.
You need legal support, especially when you're doing accountability journalism. You need the basic, you know, Structure of of an organization to do all the things to make journalism possible at at a scale. That's my view. So I don't think
Ben Smith: Yeah, sometimes you need time. Sometimes you need to say, I'm not going to write this week because I'm chasing a story. Hey, can you take over for me? And there's got to be somebody on the other end of that
David Sirota: exactly. Exactly. I would ask you then the additional question about, um, media institutions. It feels like right now. It's like a moment where the practitioners of institutional [00:15:00] objectivity and I'm putting that in quotes, institutional objectivity are finding themselves. In some ways, at odds with a larger and larger segment of the public, the public, the public skepticism of institutions generally redounds to journalism organizations specifically.
We can't trust this or that organization. And, and I think one of the questions that comes up is, how much do you think that has to do with, The entities themselves purporting to be objective, but people sensing that they're not people sensing that they're they're not being honest about that. I mean, I will I will preface this question by saying my view is, is that I think there's fair and accurate journalism.
I actually don't necessarily think there's any such thing as objectivity. Once you decide that something is a story and other things are not a story, you're making a subjective decision. And I just wonder how, if you think that kind of Old school voice of God [00:16:00] institutional objectivity that people suspect that's not what's really going on.
Ben Smith: You know, it's funny, I think we should not get derailed into a conversation about what the word objectivity means, but, you know, because it is a long running discussion in journalism, but I do think that that sentiment that you identified, like, I also sort of feel and see everywhere so acutely, which is that sense of, um, like this isn't totally on the level.
You know this article in a great publication that I respect by a journalist I like I'm still gonna go and Google a couple other versions of the same story and kind of triangulate what happened and also And I mean for and I think there are different parts of the challenge and different ways to solve it One part of it is just that there you know, an article is a set of facts some analysis some point of view and The news for the tradition in American media is too big is to roll all those together So you you know, so that The lead of the article is sort of who, what, when, where, why, statement of facts.
Then you have a statement of analysis that comes from kind of nowhere. Then you quote a [00:17:00] professor at a prestigious university saying whatever you actually think. Then you have some more analysis that may be total bullshit. That's the nut graph. But again, purporting to be fact, I think. And at no point do you say, by the way, here's who I am and where I'm coming from, which isn't to say either your, you know, gender, racial identity necessarily, Also not to say I'm a Democrat, I'm a Republican, but is to kind of say, hey, I've covered this for a while.
I used to work at one of these companies. And like when I did this interview with Vivek Ramaswamy the other day, where I was like, and you know, when he's talking about finance, the guy really seems to know what he's talking about. But when he was talking about how to run a media company, the thing I have done, like he definitely does not know what he's talking about.
And, and that's, and I don't need to quote some professor saying that. And particularly like good experienced reporters are often really, really expert on kind of key elements of the stuff they cover. And so just actually being able to be honest about that expertise really matters. I mean, it's less, but the problem, there's also challenges that if I got, if I got to the beat yesterday, you [00:18:00] shouldn't care about my opinion or where I'm coming from
David Sirota: Well, I, I very much
Ben Smith: but yeah, but I think there's just a sort of, there's like a, just a kind of bullshit quality to the way media is produced that, that I think the audience rightly detects like, Hey, who's saying this? And, you know, and we try, you can try to fix it in different ways. I think you try to be very authentic about where you're coming from.
We try to kind of separate news and opinion and put, and bring in dissenting views essentially, including if they disagree with us. But I do think trying to just level with the audience is so
David Sirota: I think that's key. And I, and I, and I want to echo that. I do think there are different ways to do it. I think the way we at the lever do it, for instance, is I don't think there's any, um, mystery around what our basic mission is, what our basic premises and essentially who I am as the person who has founded it and run it.
Like there's no mystery there. Right. So, so, and I think the way you guys do it. I actually will commend you on that, that, that I do feel like I get to know the reporters a little bit [00:19:00] every time I read them because they've got, and for those who haven't read Semaphore, there's, there's this part where many, I think it's all their articles, they have a kind of section where the reporter does some reporting and then says what their view is, which I think is like actually helpful.
I don't think it spoils the reporting. I think it actually feels more transparent. By that I mean in a good way. Like I, like I see where you're coming from. You're not giving me voice of God because voice of God is what makes me suspicious, right? Like that, that's actually, and I've told a couple of friends I know at some big publications that I have problems with their sort of political coverage where they state thing, they, they make ideological statements as factual news statements as if it's coming from the voice of God.
And I, on certain issues that I'm, I'm sort of read into, studied into. I know it's bullshit, right? I, or I know it's at least it's, it's at least not a, a, a, a binary fact. Um, so I really appreciate the way, the way [00:20:00] you guys do it. Um, I would ask you the question that, that always comes up in all of these models, the question of. This is, this is an important question. Uh, I think that, that we, that doesn't get a lot of discussion, which is there, there's a model that's totally subscriber funded. There are models that are a mix of subscriber funded and, you know, uh, philanthropic donor funded. The philanthropic donors may have their motives.
There's a model of where you add into the portfolio, uh, business funding, corporate funding, and people have the concern that. Any model that's, that's one click impure, putting that in quotes, not just straight up reader supported, makes the news content impure. What's your response to that? How do you think people should think about that?
Ben Smith: I mean, I think it's, I mean, I think that, You know, subscribers are another, another source of impurity. I mean, you know, Jesus threw the money changers out of the temple, right? Like, I think that, [00:21:00] that, you know, ultimately revenue, you know, is the lifeblood of any of these, of any company, and, you know, we pay it, we pay our reporters, and, and you, and every model, leads itself, you know, has risks to, you know, that an advertiser could get mad and push you to do, you know, and, and if you, you know, and threaten to pull ads and push you in one direction that, um, that, you know, that you could, that by alienating your subscribers, you could hurt your business.
This is actually specifically happening right now. There's a slice of a, of the, um, of the conservative sort of pundit sphere that is anti Israel, and those people are just getting crushed right now because. It's everything's become totally partisan to be conservative is to be pro Israel and so you're losing your you like goodbye to your subscribers if you're a conservative who's not pro Israel.
Um, the, you know, I think, and I think the most successful models are, You know, the ones where you can basically, and I think these are all real risks, real things that readers ought to be concerned about and aware [00:22:00] of, and the best thing you can do is just diversify as much as possible, which is to say as many different kinds of sources of revenue as possible, as many different, you know, if you have a million low dollar subscribers, that's a lot better than two big donors.
Um, the, you know, um, You know, and, and if you have 100 advertisers, that's a lot better than two advertisers. And so I think that, I mean, I, and then that's a totally imperfect solution, but I think if you look at successful media companies over the longterm and you ask sort of like, what business are you in?
Like it's true at the New York times, like what business is the New York times in like, well, there's like eight pretty decent businesses that they're kind of managing differently and separately. And if one takes a hit over here, it's not the end of the world. And then, and that's, I think the best place you can be.
But ultimately like these are businesses and. And they're all vulnerable.
David Sirota: I, I, I do agree when you, when you, when you say that there is no purity in the sense that you're right. You're, what's the old, the old Bob Dylan song? It's, you're going to work for somebody, right? Or I think
Ben Smith: Yeah.
David Sirota: it's something [00:23:00] like that, right? It's, it's, it's
Ben Smith: Who pays the, who pays the Piper calls the
David Sirota: Yeah, yeah, that, that, that, that,
Ben Smith: and that's true and not true, but yeah.
David Sirota: but you're going to answer to somebody.
So, so look, I, I'll confess here. I'm glad you bring this up. I will confess. There are times when I think about expressing a nuanced opinion on something or an opinion that is not. Um, easily put into one side or the other and the thought goes through my head. I wonder how many of our subscribers will be like pissed off at me about that.
And I think that's a question of a subscriber based model. Lots of people, because of the culture we live in, a kind of tribal culture, lots of people believe that what they are subscribing to is to agree with something rather than necessarily to be challenged or periodically or selectively challenged by things, to be exposed to many different things.
I mean, I think that's the kind of followership culture that we're in. So, [00:24:00] I think that's a good segue to this question of, it feels to me sometimes like we're moving backwards to an era, I'm not saying it was better or worse, but before the golden age of the, you know, the daily newspaper and objectivity, putting that in quotes, there was more of the idea of the, of the penny press where there were lots of little media companies, uh, that were much more, um, out there, uh, explicit about
Ben Smith: were, they were wild.
David Sirota: right. Like muck raking and so called yellow journalism, et cetera, et cetera. Um, And, and the idea back then, or I don't know if it, it was the idea, but at least the, the, the way to say that that was a good thing would, would be to say, well, there were lots of different voices. And so the cacophony kind of was, would test each individual piece of legislation or idea that would come up would get kind of, um, scrutinized by a bunch of different voices.
And out of that would come some sort of, uh, basis of fact and truth. And it feels [00:25:00] like, I think one good, one way to be optimistic about the future is. Are we moving back to that? Because, and before you answer, the reason I asked that is because that's, that's a good version of it. The bad version of it is, is that we're all actually living in our own filter bubbles.
We hear the tribal, uh, publications that we want to hear, and we don't even hear the other, the other side. And so actually we're not being exposed to like lots of, of, of different voices at a, at a small level. We're all, you know, We're all kind of getting ensconced in our own individual bubbles and there's no like basis of fact anymore.
Which way do you see? Is it both end?
riverside_ben_raw-audio_lever_time_0309: Yeah. I tend to be a both end guys. You see the, I mean, I think that, you know, the people reading the hyper 1830s probably were pretty deep in their filter bubbles,
riverside_david_sirota_raw-audio_lever_time_0311: Yup.
riverside_ben_raw-audio_lever_time_0309: you know, Like, you probably weren't, I mean, I'm sure there were people who were like, well, I've read some good things and some bad things about Abraham Lincoln, but like, in fact, probably most people were getting one or the other.
Um, [00:26:00] the, and they were as, you know, as absolutely insane and off the wall as, as, you know, anything today and more so. Um, I mean, it is, I mean, I guess I, I sort of have an observation without a real judgment that I think the overwhelming trend in media right now is just fragmentation. And there's lots of small and medium sized things growing up.
The biggest things are all shrinking. And if you think about, like, think about conservative media. Like, it used to be, like, when Fox News, absolute juggernaut, totally dominant force, Megyn Kelly goes out and starts, like, a podcast and blog after getting tossed from NBC. And it's like, you feel bad for her, basically.
That, like, this is such a tiny thing with one one millionth the power of her old platform on Fox News. Or maybe you don't feel bad for her, depending who you are, but it's a, it's, it's, it's, it's a immeasurably tiny fragment of the power she used to have. And now, Fox News, you know, obviously still the biggest one, but less powerful, less important, less dominant.
Megyn Kelly, pretty big YouTube show. Maybe she's 5 percent as powerful as [00:27:00] Fox, 10%. I don't know. But like, those things have leveled and, you know, the mood, the stat, the podcasting is like the sort of ground zero for this. And the statistic that always strikes me is that, um, A couple years ago, Pew surveyed, you know, what's your favorite podcast?
Obviously yours was first, but, um, after, after The Lever came, uh, came Joe Rogan. And, um, and, and Rogan in first place has 5 percent of the total. And that's a pretty weird market where the number one place in the market is 5 percent and everything else is smaller. Like that's a pretty unusual kind of a media market.
Usually they're much, much, much more consolidated. And so, you know, It just sort of shows, like, if I'm on the New York subway in the morning, like, I have no idea what the person next to me is listening to. Whereas if they were looking at social media, like, honestly, they're probably looking at the same tweet I am.
And it's, so it's a very different ecosystem.
riverside_david_sirota_raw-audio_lever_time_0311: and the thing that I'm torn about is, is that when you say the top guy has 5 percent of the market, I think from a purely, um, [00:28:00] competition analysis of like an economy or a, or an industry, that, that's good. That, that's sort of the way, um, sort of Jeffersonian capitalism is supposed to work. Lots of little folks sort of competing, no one giant, uh, one giant behemoth.
But the, the flip side of that is, Then becomes well, how can any big set of information that everybody needs to have how can any big story ever? Land I was talking to a friend of mine who's on one of the one of the big TV outlets and This person was basically saying, look, we can report X or Y story, and even if we do it, nothing feels like it really lands anymore.
That term lands, meaning it really kind of happens, a story is reported, it has staying power, it's much harder to have anything land. [00:29:00] And the question I always come back to is, well, it's good that there's this kind of competition and cacophony, But it's also bad that, like, big things can happen and only a smaller and smaller, potentially, in this fractured environment, a smaller and smaller, potentially, part of the audience will even know about it.
How can you have kind of a society if nothing lands?
Ben Smith: Yeah, and we're both basically political journalists and for whom landing means a public official takes action. A law is passed, something happens, and they just don't have to, the way they used to, right? Like, they might, they might pick up your story and do something, but even if it's a really big story, they just might ignore it.
They used to, at least when they wanted to ignore it, say that they were going to impanel the Blue Ribbon Commission or something. Now they can just outright ignore it. Um, and that's really true. I mean, it's, you know, it's so head spinning because I think that at the peak of sort of social media, which was, what, six years ago, eight years ago, not that long ago, stories landed with the most velocity you've ever seen.
That poor PR person got fired while she was on a plane because she tweeted [00:30:00] something stupid. Um, the, you know, stories like False stories, like, like the Cambridge Analytica story. Actually, that's, that's the one that always sticks with me. Like, descended, landed, everybody came to believe that they were true, even though they were nonsense.
Um, like, there, the stories landed too hard for a little while, I think. But, but I agree with you that now the sort of fragmentation and the means that, that the public officials in particular just have the option of ignoring
David Sirota: Yeah, and that, that to me is, is incredibly troubling. Like, it's, it's, in some ways, it's harder to get elected. Without big money than it has ever been because there is, especially at the local level, by the way, because there is, there's so little local media to kind of earned media as it's called in the political world to get your, your message out without, you know, essentially paid media, but it's also once you're in office.
There's so little coverage that's, that's [00:31:00] holding you accountable. You can just sort of tweet through it, if you will, or just kind of ignore it. Just, just pretend it's not even happening with the presumption that lots and lots of people won't even know. So I go back to the, to the, to the, the question of moving forward, knowing what we've just discussed about new models. How can, can the new, is there evidence that, that new models, can fill that particular void, that accountability void.
Ben Smith: You know, I, I think the answer is somewhat. I mean, I think state houses are probably the place where there are these tiny little ecosystems that can kind of be rebuilt even though they're small. And you see some of these nonprofits, state house, news organizations, the Texas Tribune being the kind of first, first, strongest one, you know, had really having an impact in forcing legislators to reckon with what they're doing because honestly, the dynamics of news are so weird.
Right? Having a reporter physically in your face, asking you. Even, you know, is, is very meaningful, even if actually there's no one reading that person's work or not a [00:32:00] lot of people. And so, to some degree, but the sort of mass power of like, I remember I once, I, I, um, a politician said some unwise things to me on an airplane.
And I, and I wrote, I wrote about him in the New York Daily News, and he was very upset about it. It was the cover of the New York Daily News, it's 06. And, um, I think he, he said that Hillary Clinton, I believe it was the guy running against Hillary Clinton, and he made some really gross comments about her look.
Anyway, by not, not the most important accountability in the story in the world, but I just remember it like, it was like, he, it was like he was hit by a tidal wave. Like it didn't matter, like by 7am that day, every television network in the city, it was on the, it was on every storefront in the city, a million people had read the story, every television network was talking about it.
And you sense, I mean honestly, in some sense it's a power dynamic. You really felt the power, I really felt like holy crap, like as a journalist, like I have a lot of power. That was a lot of power we just unleashed. And he had, as a, he as a Republican nominee for Senate, for better or for worse, just had absolutely no way to fight back.
And that, that [00:33:00] dynamic has
David Sirota: Yes. The, the, the connective tissue, the, I mean, I remember it growing up in Philadelphia in a different way that, that there were kind of these cross media debates about The, the different sports teams, you know, some Philadelphia Eagle or this or Charles Barkley with the Sixers would say something on local morning radio, which would then get picked up by the news radio, which would then get picked up by the sports TV, which would then get right.
It's like a kind of there's like a there's like a local conversation. Happening. It's not just like it's in one newspaper. As you in your example, it's like there's a whole kind of local chatter that I don't feel like in a lot of ways exists much anymore and rebuilding it. You're right. It's it's not that easy, but I don't want to end on a on a sad note.
So I think without asking you to be redundant, how about the things that you would The things you are [00:34:00] most optimistic about and or the things that you think are potentially on the horizon, uh, that could change things for the better.
Ben Smith: let's
David Sirota: You're like, I got nothing.
Ben Smith: Yeah, I mean, I think it's a lot. I mean, I honestly, I don't think this stuff is going to change that fast. I think we're in like the early stages of rebuilding of rebuilding institutions. And I just want you said that word institution before. I mean, I do think like you and I are certainly I came up in this sort of like post Iraq war kind of utopian new media world where it was like, no, the job is to tear down all the institutions.
They suck. And like, we're going to like free blogs and social media and it'll be this kind of utopian outcome. And now I really think like, Oh, wow, those institutions, they were pretty important. Let's try to like shore them up where we can build new ones, create kind of recreate these communities where people trust each other.
But I don't think that's like a short game. Like, I don't think there's some shortcut to that.
David Sirota: I, I want to echo that. I, I, I say that. So when people ask me about media all the time, I [00:35:00] feel like everybody's been looking for a shortcut and it's very unsatisfying, but it is reality. There really aren't shortcuts. I mean, I feel like the messenger, I know was like a debacle for a million different reasons, but I feel like the, the, my top line takeaway from the messenger debacle was like, everyone's looking for a shortcut and there is no shortcut.
I mean, even if you put a zillion dollars into something, if you don't, it's just not a shortcut. Game now, I know I know I said my last question was my last question But but but because I forgot to ask this question I want to ask it because we haven't talked about and it was part of your your recent book Which was for those who don't understand why the BuzzFeed model or that golden era I'm putting that in quotes of of Entities like a Buzzfeed at the Huffington Post, et cetera, et cetera, why that era ended for those who don't understand anything about that.
Just, just like, give us that story or the, at [00:36:00] least the top line of, of why those, those entities had a moment and what changed to, to obvious, to, to, to end that moment.
Ben Smith: Yeah. And I think, I think to understand that you have to go back a little bit, which is that. There was a generation of media investors, among other things, who made their money in cable. And the basic thing that happened with cable was that these guys with wires rolled out their wires into people's homes, and to get people to pay to have the wires connected, they had to have good content.
And so the wire guys, Paid. M-T-V-E-S-P-N-C-N-N, all these, you know, bravo, like this whole profusion of new programming that was really built for these wires where you could have hour long program, news programs, not three minute programs where you could have more sex, where you could do all you know, and HBO, you could have more sort of.
More adult programming, all sorts of stuff. And it was purpose built for those wires. And the people who rolled out the cables made a lot of money. And the people who made the content made a lot of money. And everyone was happy. [00:37:00] That's the basic cable story. You had Time Warner, you know, the cable company.
You had Time, the cable, you know. I'm going to get all this wrong. You had Comcast, the cable company. You had Viacom, the media company. They split, they split the winnings. Everybody's happy. And when you see this new set of pipes, this new set of wires come around, which is to say digital media, and then really social, these big social platforms that literally the same people, the chairman of, um, vice was, uh, had been the chairman of NB of the founder of MTV.
The chairman of Buzzfeed had been in the early days of MTV. And then at Time Warner, um, they say, okay, this is, we're going to run this play again, basically. And it was not an insane thing to think you have these new pipes. They're going to need great content that's kind of purpose built for them. And the people who are making the content that the young people on these platforms like, that's shaped sort of in a way that travels right around these platforms, ultimately there's going to, we're going to reach a business agreement with the Facebooks and the Googles and the Snapchats and the Twitters that they're going to have to pay us for content.
Um, and the thing they didn't really [00:38:00] count on was user generated content and the way in which these algorithms could take all this free stuff And instead of you're watching garbage cable access free stuff, they would give you garbage free stuff that you wanted and everybody would rather free than pay, you know, and I think, you know, we actually are now with the convergence between TV and, um, and the internet for real getting to places where subscription video broadcasts are starting to be a business and I think there's elements of that that is coming true, but it did not come true for sort of text based news publishers.
In the way that, you know, based on that cable metaphor, everybody involved thought it would and part of the reason it was a golden age was because these social media systems distributed our work so broadly and suddenly we're reaching millions of people and had all this impact. And part was because these investors had a theory of the case that did not turn out to be true, but we spent all their money along the
David Sirota: Well, it is my view taking all of this away. One thing that's for sure in my view is that. If you are in the [00:39:00] media business right now, the first and foremost thing that you need to be thinking about. is how to effectively own the relationship between your audience and yourself. And that having more things in between you and your audience, and I'm thinking about, you know, Facebook, Twitter, social media, if you're relying on Facebook, Twitter, other social media platforms as the middleman between you and your audience.
And the middleman can flip a switch, change the algorithm and make it even more difficult to talk to your audience. That's a, that's a serious problem, a serious risk for your business. That's why I do think newsletters or direct email conversations or podcasts and the, and RSS feeds, I do think those are More valuable than ever because of [00:40:00] social media, uh, being in the middle.
I wonder if just before you go, I wonder if you agree like this idea that like the social media algorithm can change and just destroy a business that how much of a problem that is.
Ben Smith: So I agree. I mean, I absolutely agree with you. Particularly it's very journalistically satisfying to be talking directly to your audience. There's a, I mean, I like this. This is sort of unmediated quality that is really nice. I would say if somebody comes along to you and says, Hey, I'll pay the lover a million dollars to put your show on Roku, even though that's like an evil middleman, you should take it.
And I think the thing is the media business is weird and complicated and always changing and, and, and people right now, there's this conventional wisdom that you don't, you know, you don't want to have a middleman, but of course, You know, the movie studios have for more than 100 years had ups and downs, but you're not buying that.
You're not going to a universal owned movie theater to watch the movie and the universal doesn't know Netflix. Like I think that we all just got screwed by social media and there's now this sense that like you can't have middlemen, but I actually, my sort of experience [00:41:00] in the news business is just sort of like, You need to be totally, totally pragmatic and, and find a bunch of different ways to scratch out enough money to pay journalists to do their work.
I mean, that's, that's sort
David Sirota: For sure. We keep coming back. We keep coming back to it. It's like you want to like, you want to hedge your bets by having a diversified, essentially a diversified portfolio. Some direct
Ben Smith: David, when you, when you endorse Donald Trump, you're going to lose a lot of subscribers. so you're going to have to think about your other revenue streams.
David Sirota: Yes, that's all coming. Everybody. My, my imminent endorsement of Donald Trump. For those who don't get the joke, Ben is, Ben is joking. That is,
Ben Smith: I'm joking. I'm joking. Keep your subscriptions, double
David Sirota: Keep your
Ben Smith: but also subscribe to our podcast.
David Sirota: Yes. Uh, and, and we will let, we will let everyone know where your podcast is when we, when we do this. Ben, listen, so much for this.
I really appreciate it.
Ben Smith: This was really fun. Thank you for having me on.

Thanks for listening to another episode of Lever Time. This episode was produced by me, Arjun Singh, with help from Chris Walker. With editing support from Joel Warner and Lucy Dean Stockton. 

Our theme music was composed by Nick Campbell. We'll be back next week with another episode of Lever Time.