It’s about ethics in journalism, with Ben Smith | Decoder

Our guest today is Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor. Ben ran BuzzFeed News at the height of the Facebook traffic boom, and even wrote a book about it, called Traffic, which he discussed with me on Decoder back in 2023.

Semafor, which is only four years old, is now a fast-growing and profitable media company, which makes about half of its revenue from events. So we asked Ben how that all works, and what it feels like to navigate the ethical conflicts that seem to be everywhere in media right now. #media #news #tech #journalism

0:00 Cold Open & Intro
2:36 Interview begins: How Semafor Is Doing
3:28 Lessons from BuzzFeed & the Traffic Era
6:00 Reacting to Jonah Peretti on Facebook & BuzzFeed
10:04 YouTube, Creators & the Anti-Scale Model
13:12 The Convening Business & Why Semafor Stays Free
16:07 Expansion, the Semaform & Semafor's Structure
25:54 Journalism Ethics & Independence
29:17 Silicon Valley & The World: Advisory Boards
36:08 News Creators, Access & the Clip Economy
42:06 Advertising, Platforms & the Coming Reckoning
53:11 Politics, Influence Ops & AI Regulation
59:34 Gulf States, Free Speech & AI in the Newsroom
1:06:13 Wrap Up

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