CNN's John Sutter says he thought social media was going to be a good business. But by 2017, BuzzFeed News had seven figures or revenue directly from Twitter and other platforms. He says working in media during Trump's campaign "was just absolutely one of the most dispiriting experiences" The experience of watching all the pathologies of it get so thoroughly hacked was 'maddening,' writes Sutter.
Have clicks, likes, and shares driven media and democracy to the point of disrepair? Sean Illing is joined by Ben Smith, the editor-in-chief of Semafor and the author of "Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral." Together, they discuss how newsrooms were transformed by social media and the pursuit of traffic, and what the future of the industry might look like.
Host: Sean Illing (@seanilling), host, The Gray Area
Guest: Ben Smith (@semaforben), editor-in-chief of Semafor, author of Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral
References:
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Engineer: Patrick Boyd
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Editorial Director, Vox Talk: A.M. Hall
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