Ben Smith: “The New York Times hired a bunch of lunatics”

Ben Smith, 46, was the founding editor of BuzzFeed News, the site which helped reinvent the way news was covered in the 2010s.

In 2020, as BuzzFeed struggled, he joined the New York Times as its media columnist.

Smith soon left the Times, setting up Semafor, a new digital media play.

In doing so he has sought to ride the latest shift in journalism: the proliferation of private media.

Semafor, Smith’s new site, is trying to offer that, albeit with no more sophistication than any other digital media site.

The site attracts 1.5 million monthly visitors, equivalent to the readership of a print magazine.

It is a pat solution to the problem it is supposed to address: the erosion of trust in journalism.

But as he noted, trust has fallen in “every social institution” and there is “obviously no magic wand” that will restore it.