FMC Fast Chat with Ben Smith, Media Columnist, The New York Times

FMC Fast Chat takes you inside the news so you can be in the know in 30 minutes. Hosted by Fair Media Council CEO and Executive Director Jaci Clement, Fast Chat features notables in news, media, and business. Shows are recorded live and driven by questions from the audience for conversations that are real, powerful, and relevant. This week's episode features Ben Smith, media columnist for The New York Times.

Today, we're happy to be chatting with Ben Smith, media columnist for The New York Times. Hi, Ben.

Hey, thanks for having me.

One of the things we always talk about at Fair Media Council is the importance of building a relationship with a reporter so they actually pay attention to your pitch. How important is it to you to actually have an established relationship with someone who's pitching you?

You know, it kind of depends. I mean, I think like, it really like, you know, particularly in this gig, I'm only writing one column a week. And so you sort of like, it's not mostly kind of coming from PR pitches. I think it's actually less relationship and more like having a sense of what you do for a living and what, like, what kind of stuff you write. So I think like the most annoying pitches and People don't really seem to do it on the phone anymore. Like, that was always the worst. But, you know, the thing where it's like, we have this new, like, you know, like, men's shoe that we're bringing out, and like, it's just not my beat, and you've got the wrong guy, and I have a common name, and like, yeah.

Yeah, that happens. We understand. So for your mind, though, what do you look for in a story? What, what are the elements that make for a perfect story for you?

Um, I guess for— I mean, I really try to break news. Like, I want new news, ideally it's new news that like somebody doesn't want released.

Um, excellent.

And it's going to cause some trouble.

Yeah.

And then, you know, and then like in the context of— and then, then, you know, in, in a way that says something interesting about some big topic or allows me to then, you know, clumsily segue onto some bigger topic.

Okay. So how long does it take you to write a column?

Um, I mean, I, you know, it's like this kind of crazy job where you have to spend a whole week writing a thing. So I spend the whole week doing it. I mean, I report a lot and then write on, you know, I write pretty fast. Once you have, if you have like tons of reporting, then writing 1,000 words is pretty easy. It's all about just what you leave out.

And then what's the process after you actually hand in a finished piece? How many people look at it before it actually gets published?

Typically 2. Like, this is actually one of the things about the Times that has been really nice because I've been, hadn't worked there before and like barely work there, right? Like it's COVID and I don't go to the office and I know lots of people there, but I knew lots of people there before.

Right.

But just the quality of the editing is like incredibly high, you know, one editor who does a really, really strong aggressive edit on the piece and then passes it on to another editor who's the weekend— who works weekends, who again, like just really asks a lot of hard questions and catches sloppy errors, and it's really been really interesting, just the amount of investment in editing is nice, it's a— like feels like a luxury as a writer.

Do they ever send anything back with a little, what were you thinking when you wrote this kind of an edit?

No, like the nice thing about like the old-fashioned newspaper edit is they just rewrite it. That's which is how I like to edit. Like the new style edit where you like, are like, don't want to hurt the writer's feelings. And so you're like, this is really great, but like, would you want to think about like adding some more facts and details and removing the parts that are bullshit? And then, but also like, I really think you're a great reporter. is like such an annoying waste of time, and it's nice just to be like, hey, I totally rewrote your piece from top to bottom, here it is, it's a lot better, we're going to publish it now. Like, that's great.

All right, and do you learn from the edits they make? Do you go over it and say, oh, now I see what they wanted me to do?

Yeah, totally, and I think they have been doing this for a long time, but, but I think, right, they have a very clear sense of their own audience, the Times does, you know, and it's like interesting to see that, like, the strong editors there will be like, no, no, our audience will be interested in this, like, Particularly, like, you can't take for granted that they know what you're talking about here and need to, like, write in a more general way. And it's been really interesting.

Okay. How would you describe the difference between this and BuzzFeed?

Um, I mean, you know, I mean, it's, it's all on the internet, right? So in some ways it's not that different. But I think that, you know, it's a different— different institutions have different kind of mandates. I mean, part of it is just that, like, the brand of the Times You know, it's like, and it's often kind of annoying because I don't really think of myself as a spokesperson for the Times, but your stuff kind of gets taken that way. But on the other hand, it comes with all this sort of built-in credibility that BuzzFeed didn't have. Like, you know, I kind of get all this kind of unearned credibility from the Times, where at BuzzFeed you always had to earn it.

Right, I understand. Now, have people started to look at you differently? Other journalists look at you differently now that you're in this spot?

Yeah, probably. I don't know. I mean, it's a weird job. I think like, yeah, particularly like if you're like, I think television journalists in particular, and the sort of big sort of personality-based folks, like have a very clear sense of like what this, that this column is sort of important and passes judgment. That's not really how I'm trying to do it. But yeah, I think they care about it a lot.

So what are you trying to do with your column?

I mean, for me, it's just like an incredible opportunity to just like ask questions and learn stuff. About things that I think are interesting and that I, you know, I think, hope other people will find interesting. And so I'm just really trying to do that without some grander project.

Okay, all right. So I have some questions here from folks who are listening, in no particular order now. So are you ready? How did you end up in Latvia?

Oh, I was— so after college, it was like 1999, And if people— there was, for like people of my like weird nerdy world, everybody wanted to go to Prague. Like Prague was the hot European city at the moment. I'd actually studied Czech, but everybody wanted to work at the Prague Post and I couldn't get a job at the Prague Post. And so I wound up at the Baltic Times in Riga, Latvia.

And how would you rate the experience now looking back on it?

Somewhere far away where it's like there's not a lot of journalists and it's not that competitive and you sort of are figuring out the job in that context. You do learn a lot.

Do you use that experience to kind of look at American journalism maybe a little bit differently?

You know, I don't know. I never— I like, I do think, I do think there's a difference between— I mean, it's funny because I have this totally insider job and I've been working as sort of an insider for a long time, but I do think I think of myself probably wrongly as an outsider.

Okay.

Because I didn't come up inside one of these big institutions kind of like getting coffee for somebody's assistant and then becoming the assistant and sort of that track.

In one of your more recent columns, you mentioned how, you know, you look to the BBC and people outside of the American press and compare how bad we are at interviewing compared to others that somehow seem to be more interesting in some way.

Yeah, I think, I mean, I don't think bad is maybe the wrong word. But I do think in American TV, it's like these hosts who you want to, whose job is really fundamentally to be liked and to be there for you while you eat your breakfast. And they—

Yeah.

And I think that they think about being liked. They think about themselves almost as political candidates or as characters in a show. And so, you know, they don't want to be jerks. And I think that in British and Australian TV, you just see, it's just sort of a different way of thinking about the job. And often you're like, who is this like pompous old jerk who's just being like unbelievably nasty to Jeremy Corbyn? Or to, you know, or to, you know, but like Andrew Neil is unbelievably pompous and sort of like difficult with everyone and is himself a conservative, but really sees the job as challenging you hard on whatever your sort of highest profile beliefs are. And there was this incredible thing where Ben Shapiro, who's sort of this conservative American journalist who I think, you know, sort of sees himself as a debater, just gets, just totally sort of falls, crumbles as Neil pushes him because he, it's just a totally, it's just, I think he didn't really expect it and didn't know what to do with it.

So where do you see American news going? How is it trending from your perspective?

You know, in lots of different directions. Like, I think there are sort of trends going in opposite directions from each other. You have, you know, you have these huge institutions, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, sort of like gathering more strength as like regional newspapers and metro newspapers collapse. But then also all around the edges, you have individual new technology that's allowing individuals to run and small groups of people to run subscription businesses in a pretty promising way.

Okay. All right. You have written in the past about the collapse of the local newspapers. And would you say you're kind of in favor of that position of that happening?

In the traditional sense of the tradition. I think it's kind of a tragedy, right? Like, and that the great metro papers of the 20th century, you know, Newsstand, Long Island, and many others were obviously these incredibly important institutions for all their flaws. I think a lot of them, you know, are really basically dead now. And I think, you know, you'll see people complaining that they've been bought by vultures. And I mean, the thing about vultures is they feed on things that are dead.

Right.

And so, like, rather than trying to revive the carcass of the thing that's being pecked at by vultures, I do think it's important, you know, for— to think about, you know, if you are in particularly like a civic leader with a certain amount of money who was thinking about investing it in journalism, do you try to buy like the Gannett paper with a bunch of debt in various directions and a printing plant? Or do you think it's going to be much— dollar for dollar, you're going to be getting a lot more journalism if you start something new? And I think you do see these nonprofits springing up in, you know, in a really promising way all over the country and a lot of really good journalism happening there.

But do you see any type of training going on in the traditional local newspapers that prepare them for dealing with news today or for—

You know, I think almost like, I mean, I think most journalists used to come up through local newspapers. And so there was a kind of standardized training. And again, kind of for better and for worse, honestly. Like, I think you did, like, there was something about the, just the requirement that you be accurate when you cover a murder or a crime story or something that's very, very important to a handful of people, but it's like incredibly important that you get it right. Um, that's a really good discipline that I think some reporters don't quite learn. Like, hey, I just need you to like cover this murder and the deadline is in 2 hours. Like, it's just a good skill that some reporters now just have never picked up.

Right.

You know, but on the other hand, those newspapers had a kind of pretty like sexist culture and a kind of conformist culture of their own and kind of tended to, you know, they had all their own problems. And so like—

Yeah.

I don't want to romanticize it too much, but I think basically there's not so much a standardized way of learning anymore. And I think people often just sort of watch each other on the internet, and if you're not careful, sort of like learned to kind of perform journalism on the internet rather than to report and get information?

Perform as in want to be a star perform?

As in like show off on Twitter how clever you are rather than break news.

I wanted to kind of latch on to current events right now with Woodward's admission that, you know, he held on to these quotes from Trump. For his book, but, but didn't disclose them. What's your feeling, feeling on this topic?

Um, I think it's complicated. I mean, I think that the idea, if only that, like, you know, of all the sort of like hay that's been piled on Trump, like the straw that would have broken the camel's back would have been this Bob Woodward quote. I don't know. I mean, I think—

Bigger picture, you don't see it as that important?

Like, I just think that there's just this belief that like the media, that Trump is primarily a product of the New York Times and the Washington Post. If only they'd behaved somewhat differently, then he wouldn't be president and we wouldn't be in this situation. I don't really see much evidence for that. I mean, I think Woodward, the Woodward thing is complicated, right? Like, he kind of is what he is.

Mm-hmm.

Like that interview, of course, doesn't take place unless, except on the sort of tacit understanding that it's for a book later. It's incredibly damning. Would you have— I mean, just you personally, were you in March saying, like, what does Donald Trump say about the science? Because that's what I want to know to determine my personal behavior. I always ask what Donald Trump thinks about pathogens before I decide what medical steps to take. That is not how I live my personal life. So I don't know. Would it have changed things a lot?

No. I understand what you're saying. But there does seem to be something happening here, though, If you take kind of that scenario and build it on what we were just talking about, how, you know, the traditional news reporting, if you started local and the focus was you need to be accurate, you need to check facts, that sort of thing. Today it seems like we've got media that has morphed into, you know, where did the objective journalism go? You know, now there's a lot of opinion-driven journalism out there. And even from people doing objective journalism, they spend a lot of time online spewing opinions. So you kind of wonder, you know, where do you find credibility today and how do you build it?

I mean, I think this is incredibly challenging stuff. I mean, I guess my own view, but I'm not sure that really will bear out, is that, you know, if you either— there are sort of two ways. Like you have a kind of big old institutional brand that people really trust and believe in a kind of ongoing way, like the New York Times, and you defend that brand more or less and try to, you know, have it stay clear. Um, or you're BuzzFeed, where I spent the last 8 years, and nobody's going to be like, oh wow, I believe that because I read it on BuzzFeed. And so you have to be really transparent. You have to say to your readers, like, you don't have to trust us because here are all the documents. You can, like, replicate our journalism basically. And try to be really, really transparent about who you are and what you're coming— where you're coming from so that you can— and even a journalist who's like, even a reader who's like, I hate these people and I think they're assholes, can— but like, hey, you know what, like, I can follow the details here and understand how they got these facts, even if I disagree with an interpretation.

Okay. All right. Do you think it's important for media to apologize?

Only when they get things wrong. But yes, for sure. And correct. I mean, one of the great things about the internet is you can just very, you know, it used to be like you get something wrong in the paper and then like 2 days later on page 3 there's some tiny little text that corrects it, but basically the lie is sort of irretrievable. Whereas you can really walk it back now and do it effectively and erase it, erase your error, and I think that's great.

I do see a lot of like the old school happening though online where they just add a little footnote saying, you know, the following errs in this story, as opposed to either changing the story to update it, or in some cases, if the story is proven wrong, shouldn't they just take it down? Why leave it in cyberspace?

Yeah, I think that's a big problem. Like, what, what do you do about, like, I think, you know, a story that is just totally wrong? Like, not like, maybe even, maybe even sentence by sentence it's right, but like the whole premise is wrong. And I think most news organizations have had that problem. I wrote a piece in The New Yorker recently that was like totally wrong. But, you know, they managed to get it so sentence by sentence it wasn't wrong. Um, yeah, I think, I think that's— I think journalism is better at correcting minor errors than major ones.

How would you change that though?

You know, I don't know. I mean, I think, I mean, I think that it's, it's— there's a sort of defensiveness around like the big things and admitting that you were like totally wrong on some big topic. Like the one I think about sometimes is nuclear energy.

Okay.

Just to go back to all the coverage of nuclear energy from the '70s and the '80s.

Okay.

And it's like, oh man, like actually we just missed the risk of climate change. And everybody writing about the dangers of nuclear energy was like totally wrong because they didn't realize that carbon emissions were this other danger, right?

Right.

Like how do you sort of evaluate that? I don't know, it's hard. And often only visible like long in retrospect.

Yeah, well, sort of like the coronavirus coverage too. We know so much more about it from a science perspective months after.

And I think, you know, part of it is that this stuff isn't meant, you know, journalism is, it's like, this is the best we know right now. And we're not, we shouldn't be pretending it's more. This stuff isn't written in stone. In some ways, like the internet preserves stuff that shouldn't be preserved at all. Like, it's a conversation. It's almost like an oral culture, right? Like, it's—

Right.

Maybe the first draft of history, but like emphasis on first draft. And you shouldn't be getting— and it's not something— it's, you know, it's something useful for historians to read and put into context later, but it's not written in stone. And I think, you know, the internet does preserve stuff that you would have had to look up on microfiche and probably should be stuck in microfiche somewhere and kind of hard to get. It's like, obviously you see things clearly in retrospect.

Right. Yeah. And for people that are younger and listening to this, there was a time before the internet where if something appeared in the daily paper, it was tossed out the next day. It didn't live on online. And if something aired on the news, unless you taped it or recorded it, it was gone. So it evaporated. So it seems to me there was a different level of responsibility almost when you knew the information would be instantly gone after you've published it. Versus now?

I'm not sure people were more or less responsible. I mean, they probably should have felt more responsibility back then. In a way, things were easier to fix now. So perhaps errors are in that kind of, you know, by that argument, are less sort of lasting. But I'm not sure anybody ever was that much more responsible.

Okay. But now with the internet and basically anyone can claim that they're a news outlet. Do you think that has kind of saturated the marketplace and made it really hard for the news consumer to really understand the difference now between an actual news outlet versus someone's crazy uncle, you know, putting out some kind of newsletter in the basement?

And by the way, there has always been a spectrum and your crazy uncle has always put out that newsletter. He just used to mail it directly to subscribers. Um, yeah. You know, but yeah, I think it's an incredibly disorienting moment because it used to be that you would like see that newsletter and you'd be like, okay, like I get what this is. It's one of these like crazy newsletters, but like maybe the guy's brilliant, it's interesting, but I can see by the way it was printed and the kind of paper it's on and the typeface what it is. I'm familiar with that. And similarly, like, you know, oh, this is an editorial and this is opinion because it's like on the back page of the first section and has a picture of the guy, you know, and this is a news story. And I think The internet strips all that context. And also, like, the conventions aren't really— if you see in a print newspaper or something with, um, like a dark border around it, and the text is maybe a little smaller, a little bigger, and in a different font, you're like, oh, that's an advertisement. But there's no exact equivalent on the internet for that. And so—

Right.

I think it's just really disorienting. I think some of those conventions have gradually grown up. But at BuzzFeed, we were like, when we were doing sponsored content, There was this idea that it was like stealth advertising, that brands were trying to sneak it in. But of course, the brands mostly, like, they wanted to be associated with it. It was an ad, that was kind of the point. And so we were always like trying to figure out, like, how do we signal this is an ad? And so for a while, Google-sponsored searches were in yellow. They would have a yellow overlay and we were like, oh cool, okay, yellow is the color for advertising. We'll put a yellow overlay on ads, makes sense. And then Google changes it. And it's like, oh, guess that's not the convention. But there just wasn't the sort of like— there just hasn't— isn't the sort of kind of conventions that grew up around print that just make things very clear for members of the audience.

Yeah, since everything sort of morphed together and it lives online, but there's no consistent labeling or look. Like if you go to a movie, you know what a rating is going to look like.

Yeah.

You know? So I wonder if we just don't shoot ourselves in the foot by not getting together and saying, let's at least just Identify these things so that the public understands what we're about.

Yep.

I know it sounds, sounds easier in theory than in actuality of getting all those people in a room together. How do you feel about the White House press briefings today? Do you think those should continue?

I mean, I think that, you know, they're sort of a show in which Trump, you know, like kind of it's Trump gets— Trump fights with the press and Trump supporters love it. I think it's great for the personal brands and for the sort of like theater of cable news. But I don't know. I mean, it's a challenge that I'm not sure there's an easy answer to. Like the whole sort of ritual of asking people questions require— like it is important that they sort of respect the convention that you're supposed to tell the truth and that you kind of have some shame. And when the person you're talking to doesn't, it is hard to understand what it's for. Yeah.

Okay. All right. How, how do you think reporters should be dealing with the concept of alternative facts?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I mean, I think we should not— obviously there is no such thing. And I think reporters are getting better at just, you know, saying, just trying to stick to what's actually going on and not allowing people to sort of— not like giving people lots of space to voice their opinions about things that aren't actually up for debate. Is the sky blue?

Since we're going into political season, what do you think the public needs to look out for when it comes to the news media covering the election?

You know, at this point, I mean, I think most— I think one of the really big stories of this election is that most people have made up their minds. There are not a ton of undecided voters. If you're deciding, I think, you know, it's important that whatever media you're consuming is telling you what the candidates' policies are on the various issues and stuff. I think more broadly, the biggest question around this election is kind of what happens when the votes are cast and, you know, and when they're counted and whether the media overly, you know, whether the media makes election sort of sits there tapping its foot and if the results aren't in on the night of the election treats it like something illegitimate has happened or whether the media can kind of help people be patient because the vote counting could take a while. Like, I actually I think that's the biggest space where the biggest and sort of scariest mistakes could happen is on election— you know, people talk about election night, but really it's quite likely to be like election week or election month.

So what is your prediction for what the story of 2020 will be?

Um, I mean, it depends who wins the election, right?

Yeah. You think it's all tied into politics?

Yeah, I mean, I do think so because I think, you know, the current, the big, I mean, obviously COVID is the, is this sort of huge story and the climate crisis is a huge story. They are both in some way political stories. They're stories about governance and governments making decisions and they are issues, they are, and obviously there are huge, um, differences in how Trump and his rivals see them.

So you don't feel you can cover stories like that without some aspect of politics playing a role?

You know, I mean, I know of course you can, but I think, and a lot of, you know, a lot of the story of COVID is not a political story. It's about a virus and how viruses work. But clearly, there, you know, you can't— I would say more of the reverse. Like, you can't really cover the election story as something that's about political tactics. It's about governance. Okay.

All right. I have a question here. It's actually coming from the CEO of the Center for Public Integrity, who's asking, how are conversations around racial representation challenging definitions of journalism?

Yeah, I think that's a great question. I think like Black Lives Matter has just been this, you know, really sweeping conversation that's touched everybody in the country and every industry. And I think in journalism, there has long been important conversations about diversity. But there's also, I think, for a long time been a kind of tacit bargain that if you're, say, a Black reporter, that, you know, we'd like you, you know, that the newsroom would like to have you, but would also expect you to bite your tongue on issues of race.

Okay.

In particular. And I think that's great. I mean, and I think it's good that that's breaking down. I mean, it's complicated also, but it's, but that you see Black reporters you know, their experience of race is a kind of expertise. They know a lot about race and racism, or some do, and some want to. And I think the old bargain that you're, you know, Brent Staples sometimes at the editorial board talks about this, but just that you're like, you know, we'd like— we'd love to have you, but as long as you keep your mouth shut on certain things, is I think over. Which, and I think newsrooms are realizing that, you know, when you talk about representation, that actually means you're going to have a wider spectrum of points of view inside the newsroom. And you have— and dealing with that, you can't just sort of— it's— that's not just doing exactly the same thing as you were doing yesterday. And I think that's a really meaningful and interesting change.

Okay. Great big step forward for a lot of newsrooms, right? Um, what— one thing that I wanted to bring up is you had actually mentioned this in a recent column also. When you were at BuzzFeed, you published the Steele dossier. At the time, I believe, um, you were quoted by someone as saying, you know, if someone, um, contradicted you for publishing that or criticized you for publishing that, your response was, if we err, it's on the error of publishing. Is that a correct statement?

Yeah, that's right. The media ought to err on the side of transparency. Although I don't think that was an error.

So— Okay. I was going to say, looking back, how do you feel about it? Would you have changed anything that you had done?

I think it was clearly the right call. I mean, I think as that year even developed, you may recall there was this huge fight between Devin Nunes and Adam Schiff that would have been like genuinely incomprehensible if you weren't allowed to talk about the dossier. We'd have had a situation where all these media organizations were saying, well, these 2 very powerful congressmen are fighting, but you know, unfortunately, we can't tell you what it's about because we have this secret document. We can't show it to you because it would like burn your eyes out if you looked at it. But, you know, we can tell you it's really shocking. I mean, it's just, it's not—

Yeah.

It just doesn't make any sense. You know, when you have a document that's been briefed to 2 different presidents of the United States, that's being circulated, fought over, acted on at these very, very high levels of power, it, you know, it's obviously in the public interest to understand that it is there. And also, by the way, that it's not verified. And a federal judge agreed with us on that in the end.

Okay. All right. Well, one of the things you mentioned in your column is when, when you published it, you thought about publishing it. You didn't really think about the aftermath of what would happen once it was published.

Yeah.

So looking back now, were you surprised at what happened after it was published?

I've been surprised by so many things, right? It's been a surprising couple of years. I just think it's really important that you not, as a reporter, spend the time kind of gaming out the political consequences of revealing things that are real. You know, I think you can really sort of get yourself twisted up and wind up kind of breaking a compact with your audience if you do that.

Okay. So, so you're more of a let's focus on, on the job and whatever happens after we do the job is what happens?

Yeah, I think reporters have a real— I mean, it's not— of course, it's not totally that simple. And you, I mean, you obviously worry about consequences to individuals, you know, in a way that if you're, you know, in you shouldn't be carelessly harming people, which is very easily done with journalism, particularly in various sort of digitally related ways. Um, but no, but I think if you're saying, you know, should I lie to my audience or suppress things because I'm afraid my audience can't handle it, you're going down a kind of dangerous road.

Okay, fair enough. So let me end with one more question for you. So what's the best part about being Ben Smith today?

Um, I don't know. Hanging out with my kids and nice fall weather.

The Fair Media Council is a 501 nonprofit organization advocating for quality news and working to create a media-savvy society. For more information about the Fair Media Council and upcoming Fast Chat shows, check out fairmediacouncil.org. This podcast is a part of the C-Suite Radio Network. For more top business podcasts, visit c-suite-radio.com.