“I Think You’re Reading Too Much Into That”: Ben Smith Talks Steele Dossier, James Bennet, and—Obviously—Semafor

You know, I’m sympathetic to everybody, Joe. I’m a reporter fundamentally. I mean, as a matter of human resources, was this an appropriate disciplinary process? That’s not my line of work. I don’t know. I just called him up, and he wanted to talk to me and say what he wanted to.

But it goes to the heart of your larger critique of the media and, by default, The New York Times, which is implied, and you can correct me if I’m wrong: that the Times is in a liberal bubble and that affects your trust in the news.

You know, I think you’re reading too much into that. That was a story. But I mean, you know, and this is actually tricky when you are the editor of a thing and you’re also writing [a media column]—that wasn’t a story about Semafor, that was a story about The New York Times and about a place that actually, to me, is being pulled in all sorts of directions that make it a very complicated place to operate.

But that’s like if The Wall Street Journal [wrote a column about The New York Times]…

What we’re doing is actually, like, a much more simple, literal thing that is not really about The New York Times or The Wall Street Journal or anybody else, but is actually about: What do people say they want? Can we listen to them and do it? Which is to sort of break down this form of a story to, you know—

The Semaform.

Yes, to do this Semaform thing, to bet on transparency and speak very, very directly in a way that is also, I would say, influenced by Substack and by this shift toward people’s voices being very straightforward and readers liking that. And so actually, from my perspective, I wouldn’t—I don’t know, you’re reading too much into that piece, and I think what we’re trying to do is actually quite straightforward and not really so much intended as a critique of anybody else.

So here’s Joe’s view.

Joe’s view. Here we go.

I’m looking at Semafor. I see those clocks across the top. My first thought was, Why isn’t there an LA clock on here? I want an LA clock. My second thought is, Okay, I’m enjoying this. It’s like I’m reading the Financial Times for free. I like that part. So now my question becomes, when are you gonna make me pay for this?

You know, I’m glad you like it enough that you wanna pay. We wanna, like, find a lot more people—

I didn’t say that, Ben.

—like millions more people who feel that way before we start charging. I mean, I think our view is, like any normal purveyor of normal content, you wanna get people addicted before you start charging. We feel great about the advertising business we’re launching with, and we wanna build—we feel that we’re on our way to building a big audience who like us, and then we’ll think about, What are folks willing to pay? How does it make sense to charge down the road a bit? But I think we’re not ideological about revenue. I think one of the big mistakes of the last few years is that everybody talks their books, and I was guilty of this myself at BuzzFeed. If you’re in the advertising business, well, look, that makes journalism free to everybody. And if you’re in the subscription business, you say, well, we’re independent of the pressures from advertisers. I mean, ultimately it’s a fairly tough business. I was actually talking to somebody recently who was in the car wash. And they were just like, “You know what? We just, like, spend X and make three X every year. It’s really straightforward. You people are crazy to be in the media business. Like, it’s a tough, hard business…” I think [Semafor CEO] Justin Smith is this very experienced operator, and I’m reasonably experienced. And our view is just, you have to be totally rational about how you make money to support quality news and not kind of develop some big ideology that one category of revenue is your killer app because really you’re secretly a tech company.

This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.