“Smith throws stones at Facebook and the populist right, but doesn’t express any doubts that such an environment may not be conducive to good reporting. He never asks whether what BuzzFeed did was fundamentally harmful, or whether the model they pursued was inherently corrupt — particularly given that, as a Buzzfeed shareholder, he was financially affected by such traffic.”
Out now in The Dispatch: my review of Ben Smith’s “Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral”. Give it a read!