The Axe Files - Ep. 136: Ben Smith · Ep. 136 – Ben Smith 1 The Axe Files - Ep. 136: Ben Smith Released April 6, 2017 [00:00:06] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now, from the University

Ep. 136 – Ben Smith 1

The Axe Files - Ep. 136: Ben Smith Released April 6, 2017 [00:00:06] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now, from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN, "The Axe Files", with your host, David Axelrod. DAVID AXELROD, "THE AXE FILES" HOST: Before I talk about my guest, a little bit of news for you, a little bit of Axe Files news, we've been nominated for two Webby Awards for best show, and God bless them, best host. And if you want to vote on this, you can go to webbyawards.com and register your opinion and it's kind of important actually because they're going to determine the winners based on the votes. So if you like what we're doing here, take a minute and go to webbyawards.com and let them know. So now, my guest, Ben Smith. I met Ben in Iowa back in 2007 when he was working for Politico and he wrote a blog thereon politics and was covering the campaign. Sometimes it had a little edge to it that piss me off but oftentimes I was impressed by how insightful he was and he came to some conclusions before many others about what was going on in 2007 that showed real wisdom and insight into our political process. And then he went on to become the -- one of the majordomos at BuzzFeed where he manages their news operation. I got to talk to Ben the other day, came by at the university by the Institute of Politics, got to talk to him about the state of our politics, the state of news in the era of Trump BuzzFeed and the new media environment. Ben Smith, welcome. When I -- when you and I first encountered each other a decade or so ago, maybe longer, you were just the reporter dogging me and asking provocative questions and now you're like an empire. So congratulations on that. BEN SMITH, EDITOR-IN-CHIEF, BUZZFEED: Thanks. I come to think of it, I never got the sense I was your favorite reporter. AXELROD: Yes. You know what, it's not necessarily. As an old journalist, I'm not sure that you should aspire to be anybody's favorite reporter anyway, but you are good. You know that when I wrote my book "Believer" and I was recounting the campaign of 2007 and '08, I came across an old piece you wrote from Iowa in July of 2007. And it was kind of a -- it was a seminal moment in the campaign because it was when Obama started finding his voice and you kind of discerned what we were doing and nobody else had. You wrote about the fact that in a very partisan, you know, contest there in the caucuses that people actually were hungering for someone who could be a unifying figure in the country, that that actually trumped hyper partisanship, or at least that you discern that that was our theory, that that message might actually break through and you were the first guy who actually wrote that piece. So I -- years later, I have to tell you, I really admired your reporting and if I didn't mention it to you until, you know, 10 years later. SMITH: Yes, gosh, that seems like an exotic theory now. AXELROD: Yes, but -- yes, exactly. Although, it certainly was true, Ben. SMITH: Yes.


AXELROD: It would -- it absolutely was true and we are finally getting sort of breaking through with that and it was -- that was impressive, that you picked up on it, but I digress because we should talk about you. And in getting ready to speak with you, I learned stuff about you that I never knew before and I'm not even going to ask you about your parents yet. I want to ask about your grandparents because -- SMITH: Oh, dear. AXELROD: Well, I, you know, I love baseball. SMITH: Yes. AXELROD: And it turns out that your grandfather was a novelist turned guy who wrote about baseball. SMITH: Yes, he was a baseball historian and a ghostwriter for Mickey Mantle and Tommy John and many other ballplayers. AXELROD: Would -- how did that -- was he like from birth a baseball fan or? SMITH: Yes, he had played -- you know, born in 1906, so he'd played whatever kind of sandlot semiprofessional ball and then a pitcher and then had -- I think he grew up in Boston and had gone to college for little while and dropped out to work in the woods and -- [00:05:05] AXELROD: To work in the woods. (CROSSTALK) SMITH: … like to cut trees down. AXELROD: Oh, I see. SMITH: Like a logger, like it was like that was one -- AXELROD: You know, Massachusetts in the woods say -- (CROSSTALK) SMITH: I don't come of wasps stop. So there was none of that. He is from Irish Boston. And yes. And then I think, you know -- and then eventually, sort of found his way into a sort of fancy New York novelist career, that was not a millionaire he totally loved and then wound up paying out with ballplayers and -- AXELROD: Yes, my dad, you know, was an immigrant and came to New York and learned baseball I think before he learned English and play with Hank Greenberg and ended up being like baseball, got a college scholarship because he could play, could pitch and stuff. So that -- now, did he impart his love of baseball to you? SMITH: Yes, yes, for sure. Although, he also -- you know, what's funny, I was -- he was -- I was very close to him and grew up kind of following him around and recently I was going through his papers and the way he reported was so amazing, you know, because he would -- he wrote these several histories of baseball and, you know, he's sort of writing in the '50s and '60s. And so he would write letters to all the players on the team, you know, saying, you know, there was this great play, there's this legendary time when so-and-so stole third base and then they over -- and the catcher overthrew and the guy came into home and crashed into the catcher and everyone is talking about it.


Can you -- you were playing second. Can you recount to me what you remember of that? And he would just be mailing all these letters to retired ballplayers in Florida and having this extensive detailed correspondence about like these kind of half forgotten plays -- AXELROD: But not to them, I bet. SMITH: No, totally, vivid to them, yes. And it was this nonacademic history. This -- but based on all these salty letters, just piles and piles of letters to all ballplayers. AXELROD: And were these books literary in their field? SMITH: No. They were very unpretentious and kind of usual and intellectual, yes. (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: I wonder if he wrote a letter to Mickey Mantle saying what were you guys doing in the Copacabana when that brawl broke out that cause the Yankees to trade Billy Martin? SMITH: He ghost wrote a book for Mickey Mantle and this is -- I mean the glory days of ghostwriting, which I assume continue to this day in which you and I have the galley that he sent Mantle and Mantle's coming up was looks good. AXELROD: I bet that's true. I wonder if he thumb through it to see if it was a -- how probing a biography it was in retrospect probably not what he was looking for. SMITH: No, I think it probably was what he was looking for. It didn't get the sense he was a big reader though. AXELROD: So that -- so your interest in writing, reporting, was that part of your grandpa? SMITH: Yes, actually. He'd also -- he'd been working in the Maine woods and had been -- and actually had run into -- and then wound up working as a night clerk in a hotel there and befriended a New York newspaper publisher who was staying there. And the guy -- the guy took a liking to him and said he should come down to New York and come work for the -- I think it was the "New York World" and telegraphed him and said -- and still I have the telegraph, you know, it come down January 1st, 1920, whatever and come work for us. And he came down and he wound up covering the crash of -- the stock market crash and said that reporters would watch and he's probably embellish telling. There's -- as these sort of like finance guys lost their fortunes and jumped out windows and the crowds would cheer. AXELROD: My. SMITH: Yes. But he -- yes. He also -- in one of his novels, he wound up, he wrote about a guy who was a night clerk at a hotel and who gets a telegraph from a publisher coming, telling him to come down to New York and be a journalist and the novel got rips it up and stays in the woods. He was always ambivalent about it. AXELROD: Did you -- but did he impart to you an interest in that? SMITH: Oh yes. I mean I wanted, you know, I want to be a writer when I grew up and I actually sort of fantasize in particular about being a City Hall reporter for a New York tabloid, like that's what I wanted to be.


AXELROD: Yes. So you made it. SMITH: Yes. I got to be at City Hall for the "New York Daily News", which was pretty good. AXELROD: I want to ask you about that but just a couple of things on your -- I know your grandmother was a Mark Twain scholar. SMITH: Yes. You really did your homework out if you know where you'd find them. AXELROD: There are people in the room here who were listening to us record this who do an assiduous job of preparing me for these conversations. So, nice job, guys. SMITH: Good work, yes. AXELROD: Yes. I'm glad he -- she actually was a Mark Twain scholar because that would have been awkward if that wasn't true. But, yes. So that is interesting in and of itself. Did you -- did she regale you with stories of Mark Twain? SMITH: She published actually a great collection called "Mark Twain on The Damned Human Race". Mark Twain was a very -- there was a lot of really darkness and pessimism in Twain -- AXELROD: Yes, "Life is just one damn thing after another" was a Mark Twain quote. [00:10:00] SMITH: Yes. And he wrote a story where the devil comes to earth and I think it sort of appalled how terrible all the humans are. AXELROD: Yes. Well look, some of the great H.L. Mencken, just a miserable guy in many ways but one of the great talents -- certainly one of the great talents in journalism of the 20th century. And your dad was a judge. SMITH: Yes, he was at Petaca Point. He is a conservative Republican. He's on the bench in New York. AXELROD: And -- but your mom was not a conservative. SMITH: No. I think -- I mean I think like -- maybe like a lot of journalists, I grew up in a household where my parents disagreed on pretty much everything and it makes it hard for you to be a real ideologue or to sort of -- you know, or to see the opposing side. To see these two sides is irreconcilable enemies. She's a Democrat and he's also fairly Christian. She's Jewish. So I don't know. (CROSSTALK) SMITH: It's a good way to turn out kind of wishy-washy journalist. AXELROD: I never thought of you as wishy-washy. But did -- was your dad involved? I mean he -- you have to run for a judge, right? SMITH: No, it's an appointment. AXELROD: Oh, it is. It's totally appointed -- (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: … he never have to run for attention or --


SMITH: He'd been a lawyer for most of his career. AXELROD: And was he active in politics at all? SMITH: Yes, he was a big supporter of George W. Bush of Petaca. AXELROD: Probably going back in the day to the kind of Rockefeller Javits. SMITH: He, you know-- AXELROD: Or was he -- SMITH: I think he's been a liberal and I think -- and I kind of sympathize with this. It's like hard to be a liberal on Upper West Side of Manhattan, like -- seems like it kind of gets boring, right? AXELROD: Yes. SMITH: So I think eventually. (CROSSTALK) SMITH: There is a certain kind of personality where you live in the Upper West Side of Manhattan then you wound up a conservative. AXELROD: Liberal on the Upper West Side of Manhattan is a conservative, right? And then liberal is a way to the right of the average person on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. And you went to private schools there? SMITH: Yes. AXELROD: I only mentioned that because I'm a public school graduate -- SMITH: You know, my -- AXELROD: … junior high school 104. That's where -- that's the other New York then. SMITH: You know my -- I think my son is going to be going to your alma mater, actually. AXELROD: Stuyvesant? SMITH: Yes. AXELROD: Yes, that was -- SMIHT: He just got in. He's really pleased. AXELROD: Yes. It's a great place. It's a greater place now, probably. When I went there, it was a dumpy like 19th-century building on the -- on 16th Street in First Avenue. Since then, they've built this incredible edifice in lower Manhattan that is like space-age -- SMITH: Yes, it's gorgeous.


AXELROD: … space space-age high school. And were you writing then, were you writing in school? SMITH: You know, not that much. I didn't -- you know, I guess I worked for the high school newspaper. It was never there's a kind of like organizational ability and ambition that gets you to be editor of your high school newspaper that I never totally had. Yes. So I, you know, wrote a bit but didn't, you know, my summer job was delivering chairs. AXELROD: Yes, and then you end up -- you -- where did you go to school? SMITH: Montreal (ph)? AXELROD: And you ended up doing an internship at "The Forward". SMITH: "The Forward". Yes, that was really where I got the bug. AXELROD: Jewish newspaper. SMITH: Yes, Jewish newspaper. AXELROD: Just as easily, apparently been the Catholic Daily but -- SMITH: "The Irish Echo". Yes. You know, yes. Sooner as I know it was -- I was one of a fairly large number of interns, the others got Seth Lipsky, really one of the great newspaper editors -- AXELROD: Yes. SMITH: … I've ever encountered. And just totally got the bug. I mean covered Eric Schneiderman's race for state Senate on the Upper West Side, right? (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: Right, now the Attorney General big thorn in President Trump's side. SMITH: Yes. There's a huge (inaudible). There was a lot of oppo in that state Senate race being faxed to me. I just kind of fell in love with it and Lipsky tried to get me to drop Eddie Ellen (ph), stay there with him, but I -- and almost did. AXELROD: Yes. Well you -- I had that same -- my first newspaper was "The Villager" in New York and I got an internship when I was in college and then it took me a while to get back to college because I like to work -- SMITH: I mean it's just so much fun. AXELROD: … so much. Yes. SMITH: And you can't believe they pay you for it. AXELROD: Yes. Well, they barely did but I couldn't believe how little they pay me to do it, but I would have done it for nothing, honestly. SMITH: Yes.


AXELROD: And they knew that too. And you ended up at the "Indianapolis Star". SMITH: Yes. That was -- you know, I was a New York City kid and that seemed like a really interesting faraway place to go. AXELROD: And? SMITH: And it was. I mean it was a fellowship. It's in the Pulliam Fellowship. I think they still do really kind of a great program, covered cops. I mean it's just like such an important thing to do as reporter because particularly as you become -- as you move into national politics, you can kind of say -- like there's a -- nobody -- there is not a machine for holding people accountable when they say just kind of bullshit about national politics, stuff that could be truer, could be false and it is sort of unverifiable. [00:15:02] When you cover crime like somebody's -- AXELROD: Somebody's child -- (CROSSTALK) SMITH: … father who got killed and if you spelled their name wrong, that is like incredibly hurtful to them and this is the most -- this is the worst day of their life and you're covering a situation where the stakes are for this person incredibly high. And so you -- you have to get it right and you feel the importance of getting it right. AXELROD: Now, did you do this at night? SMITH: I did get to do some night cops although it's mostly -- I was mostly -- I mean I was like essentially an intern, they call it at the fellowship but -- and paid better than an internship, but in other ways it was not a very senior job. The strangest thing that happened was that summer there was -- you probably remember this guy, he was a racist spree shooter who came through Chicago and then Bloomington, Indiana. His name was Benjamin Nathaniel Smith, which was my name. My middle name is Eli, but -- and it was very strange and that was the Fourth of July, so the interns were working. And so I covered this and I -- so I remember calling the FBI and saying I'm reporting for "Indianapolis Star". This is my name and they immediately called the desk back and said you actually have a reporter with that name. Yes. AXELROD: So let me -- let me ask you this. How does one go from the "Indianapolis Star" to the "Baltic Times" in Latvia? SMITH: You know, it was the late '90s and everybody wanted to go to Prague and I had actually studied Czech. I speak some Czech and read Milan Kundera and so I applied for a job at the "Prague Post" but everybody wanted to work in Prague. So I couldn't get a job in Prague. I tried to get a job in Warsaw. AXELROD: During the Havel period. SMITH: Yes, it was -- yes, I think Havel was still in charge and it was just like, you know, there's this great book called "Prague" by Arthur Phillips where he -- about all these young Americans in Istanbul who want to go to Prague. It was just like that was where people wanted to be. (CROSSTALK)


SMITH: … job in Moscow and the one job I could get was at the "Baltic Times", the best English-language weekly in Riga. AXELROD: And so you have the one experience in Indianapolis, talk about what that experience did for you. SMITH: I mean -- so I worked for the "Baltic Times" for a little while but was also sort of, you know, hustling freelancer, stringer, wound up string for the "Wall Street Journal". And certainly I do think that there is something about being that far from the center that you, you know, as a reporter, you sort of have to really think about what people are going to be interested in, like there was no reason for anybody ever -- in the U.S. would ever run a story about Latvia and like it wasn't -- then once I -- I was in Belarus when the Latvian government fell and like the desk didn't notice, I got back like terrified that they be mad at me because I miss something but nope, nobody noticed. And so, it's not like I was like the least valued in play of the entire Dow -- I was paying 500 bucks a month, but of the entire Dow Jones, you know, I was an employee, but of the entire Dow Jones Empire. And so you really like to think about what people were interested in -- AXELROD: So what kinds of stories did you write? SMITH: You know, a lot of -- actually a lot of features, lot of stories about -- you know, the core stories were NATO and European Union accession but really kind of like stories about the withdrawal of the Soviet Union, what was left behind, sort of attempts to remake these market economies. There was -- I mean, Russian influence -- it was sort of a joke then that Russia was constantly drawing redlines. The west was constantly stepping over for them and there were no consequences. It was in Russia was this sort of weakest and most humiliated, nobody bothered learning Russian anymore out there. AXELROD: Yes. SMITH: It's really a very different -- AXELROD: These are the times that caused Vladimir Putin's blood to boil. SMITH: Yes, oh yes. Hundred percent. AXELROD: Looking back on that experience and watching some of these developments today and Putin in particular and some of the sort of the retrenchment that's going on there, what were your thoughts about that? SMITH: I mean I think that on, you know, that these countries are incredibly vulnerable, I mean, if you just physically been there. These were Russian military centers down the road from Riga and you sort of feel -- I mean you can sort of feel their kind of geographical vulnerability. I mean I think honestly, the thing I learn most there in a way was these countries were -- you know, when you come from the U.S., you think about -- you think about your country as real actor in history and about sort of how American actions shape the 20th century. These are countries that were, you know, just history kind of wash back and forth over the hundreds of thousands of people died, murdered and deported. They weren't really -- they're more historical actors at all. Some of that happened to them and it looks so


-- and in the prickly Second World War, but this sort of 20 century history looks so different from the perspective of these countries. And actually, I think this Sebastian Gorka story now, I mean I think that's a story that I think about in that context. AXELROD: In the White House. SMITH: Yes, Hungarian, emigrated family comes back to Hungary is associated with the nationalists there who have, you know, who were sort of who were tied to the Nazi side and people who supported the Nazis during World War II. That's a very complicated story and I think you can't -- it's very hard for me to -- it's difficult I think to judge the choices that people made about which side you're on when you're choosing between Stalin and Hitler in these little countries with no sense there on destiny. [00:20:20] I do think it's a -- perhaps a different thing too in the office, join one of those groups but I do think that he's -- that that's a story that's kind of steeped in this history that's like hard for us to even understand. AXELROD: We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back with Ben Smith. (COMMERCIAL BREAK) AXELROD: So, on the subject of Gorka. So, how does that inform your thinking about how he is thinking as an aide to the president? Now he's pretty tied in with Bannon in this kind of hyper nationalism and anti-emigrant, anti-trade battleship America kind of view. SMITH: Yes. I mean it seems like he comes out of this -- it's almost not so much 20th century nationalism, but it's -- but in this smaller Eastern European countries, there was this nostalgia for -- you know, the -- as they saw it and in some cases accurately kind of brave patriots who had resisted the Soviets when the Communists took over, in some cases, you know, fighting in the forests and taking pot shots at Soviet soldiers through the '50s. In some cases very tightly aligned with the Nazis, in other cases not. But I think, you know, there was a revival of kind of nostalgia for those groups, and for that -- it was just a complicated thing. And, you know, certainly associated with a real ethnic nationalism, I mean in Hungary and Nazis places that really -- there weren't a lot of Jews at that point to get upset about, but it really -- I think there was really violence against Gypsies and that's who -- those were the internal enemy these guys were going after and the parties -- and the groups that Gorka was associated with were certainly associated with that. I mean it's a really -- it's a sort of small and odd stream to be drinking from in this particular moment. AXELROD: It's so odd too because, you know, you -- and we'll get to this. I don’t want to leap into it, but, you know, you lay that aside, the sort of pro-Russian influences that you see around Trump and, you know, how do you reconcile all that. But all over Europe, you know, you -- now you see this sort of, you know, right-wing populist, these right-wing populist movements growing with ties to Russia, I mean it's in direct assault on liberal democracies. And, you know, how do you reconcile all of those different streams? SMITH: Yes. I mean I think it's kind of -- Putin has -- I mean the Communists could never have supported these deeply anti-Communist groups that Putin has no idea. He's very ideologically flexible and so -- yes, he's strangely enough aligned with the people who were on the other side of the great patriotic war.


AXELROD: Right, right. Getting back to firing peaceful shot, you then covered New York politics for a while. Had you find your way back? SMITH: After 9/11 actually, you know, I kind of wanted to come home and it's not -- there wasn't a lot of interest … AXELROD: By the way, being overseas did give you a different feeling about America, did it refine your view of this country? SMITH: No way I can really put a finger on. AXELROD: OK. Then let's go back to how you go back to New York. SMITH: OK. You know, after 9/11, I really wanted to come home. There was not a burning interest in Latvian news, actually, that was another time, the desk probably didn't check in with me for like two months or maybe -- I mean told the Mexican, you know, there was -- Eastern European been a big story of the '90s and immediately totally fell off the map. And I called Seth, who had been my editor at "The Forward" and asked him if he knew of any jobs. And he said, oh, I just raise money to start a conservative New York newspaper, the "New York Sun". And I am -- you know, come work for me and so I did. And I was -- I went to work for them for six months, actually before they started. So I did things like I reported out and wrote and catches obituary. He long outlived the "New York Sun". AXELROD: Yes. SMITH: And, you know -- AXELROD: Sun set before he I did. SMITH: I did. And I would call people and say I'm working for the "New York Sun" and before I could say a newspaper that does not yet exist, they would say "Oh, I love that paper." AXELROD: So six months -- SMITH: Yes, and then we launched and, you know, I was there for year, year and a half, covered this sort of permanent New York stories. There was a great expose this week on these lawyers in Queens who just make enormous amounts of money from the surrogate courthouse in Queens and I was like, god damn it, I wrote that exact story about those same people in 2002. [00:25:15] AXELROD: Yes. SMITH: You know, I mean it's -- I was in Bloomberg City Hall early on when he was -- the smoking ban was the big fight, he sees a lot of time yelling at Maggie Haberman about smoking because she would smoke on the steps of City Hall. Had the real like privilege of being in this kind of basement City Hall press room with Glenn Thrush and Maggie Haberman for -- AXELROD: Yes. There -- they’ve gone on to bigger and better -- SMITH: Yes, they've done it right. They -- and I remember because I was like this kid reporter as my first job and they were sitting in -- she was like the fourth string reporter at "The Post" and he was with Bloomberg or Newsday, but like the real guys were up in room nine, and we were down in room 4A, the


annex press room and I -- they were just such terrifyingly aggressive and strong reporters and I remember thinking like my god, if this is the B team, like how good are like the real hacks upstairs but of course these were like the two best reporters I've ever encountered. (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: They're doing incredible reporting on the administration -- SMITH: Yes. AXELROD: … right now. Was Trump -- was he part of your consciousness back then when you were covering City Hall? SMITH: You know, he was kind of on the margins of my consciousness because by that time he was kind of a joke. I remember -- one of -- the one -- I remember asking Maggie very early on like, you know, New York journalism career that there would be -- then the gossip pages of the news and "The Post" would constantly have these incredible stories. I'm trying to remember which wife it was, maybe it was Marla, was either sleeping with Trump or wasn't sleeping with him or in the same bed or not in the same bed and the sex was great or it wasn't great and I always to a source close to Trump. And I remember asking like who is this source you guys have, like this is crazy. Is it like the housekeeper, you know. And she's like, no, you idiot. It's Trump, that's the code. And that was a real -- that was a real eye-opening moment for me. AXELROD: Yes. What was his -- SMITH: This was after the John Miller days. AXELROD: John Miller, yes. SMITH: But he also -- AXELROD: This is his alias. SMITH: But the other thing was, you know, by the time I got to the "New York Observer", which would have been my next job in like three or four. By that time -- and we never wrote about Trump. He was -- he wasn't -- you know, we covered the New York City power elite and he was not part of it. And in fact another report originally told me, by the time I got there, there was a ban quoting him. He was such a dialogue, such an easy get that if you are working on some feature and it was Tuesday afternoon and you only had two quotes, you need to just call Trump wherever he was, he'd pick up the phone, spout some nonsense. AXELROD: The weird thing is, he's still an easy quote. SMITH: Yes. AXELROD: I mean you can either dial up by your Twitter account or reporters call and say, I'd like to talk to the president and if he is in the mood, he just apparently picks up the phone and that's it. It's got to be a nightmare for the people around him. SMITH: I think a lot of the people who get -- who have gotten good press and have sophisticated press have always done their own press, right? I feel like as a reporter, you sort of sense that category of character like, you know, and maybe they have effective aides around them. But like our --


(CROSSTALK) AXELROD: … our president, though, you know. SMITH: Well I mean he's, you know, it's an unconventional. AXELROD: Yes, I would say. I would say. You are going to say something about Sharpton? SMITH: This is category of New York figure who've always who are sort of self invented and you wonder sometimes, gosh, who's behind the curtain. But of course it's just them. AXELROD: They're behind the curtain. SMITH: Yeah. And I think of Sharpton in that category, I think of Trump in the category and handful of others. AXELROD: You mentioned "The Observer". This is, of course, in the pre-Jared Kushner days. Did you -- when did he come on your radar screen? He bought the paper. SMITH: Well his family had been on our -- "The Observer's" restaurant because (inaudible) reporter there, did a lot of the reporting on his father's very complex and strange criminal case and -- which revolved in some ways on Jim McGreevy's kind of departure in disgrace. AXELROD: He was the governor of New Jersey. SMITH: New Jersey. It was all the most New Jersey stuff you ever heard. AXELROD: Yes. It was raunchy and lot of sex and strange goings-on. SMITH: And yes. And Jared, I guess, you know, bought the paper, I think, in 2006. Yes, I mean, I think I never really -- AXELROD: You were gone by the -- SMITH: Yes. And I know him casually, but never had any real meaningful interaction with him. AXELROD: What's your sense of him? SMITH: I mean, you know, I don't really have a strong sense of him. I don't think he left a -- AXELROD: You know, he's running the world now that's why -- SMITH: Yes. I mean I saw that -- I don't think he left a real stirring impression on the people who worked with and for him. And he certainly now with the "Observer". He -- I mean I saw -- you know, today, we reported that there -- we recently reported that he -- that he's also solving relations with American-Muslim community. He had a private meeting with Muslim leaders and I think also the Middle East and he's also reforming government. [00:30:07] It does seem -- AXELROD: He's a liaison to China.


SMITH: Aide to China. I mean -- AXELROD: It was just in Iraq. SMITH: If you weren't -- if you are not, you know, relative by merit to the president, you would say wow they're setting this guy up for a fall. AXELROD: Yeah. But I -- that's the thing, you know, in the Trump family, when you're in, you're in. It's not likely that -- and that's part of the problem of having relatives in those jobs is, you know, everybody in the building knows -- well, they're not getting fired, they're not going to get let go. So it puts them in an advantageous position but it creates a group dynamic that can be awfully strange, you know. SMITH: Do you think loyalty is a flaw in a politician? AXELROD: No, I think loyalty is to be admired to a point. If you're loyal to the point where your loyalty jeopardizes your responsibilities to do the job you need to do, then I think it's problematic. I mean you can be personally loyal to someone but not at the expense of the country. So, you know, I guess I would put it that way. And certainly I understand him wanting to be -- people around him who he trust, the reality of Trump is the only people he's really ever trusted terribly much were his -- were his kids and his family. And it's hard to run the United States of America like that. But I guess we're going to find out. SMITH: We are finding out every day. AXELROD: You -- and then you moved on to Politico with Maggie and -- SMITH: Yes, I think I can tell the back story of that, you know. They -- I think they wanted to bring (inaudible), the founders of "The Post" were John Harris, Jim VandeHei -- of Politico were great "New York Post" -- "Washington Post" -- AXELROD: Right. SMITH: … political reporter and editor and I think they wanted to bring chrysalis with them, had managed to get him along and they wanted, you know, like the bloggers 2006 or '07, you needed a blogger. And then I think they tried to get Marc Ambinder and, you know, he was at the hotline which is a pretty good gig. And so I think they were asking around and somebody knew somebody who had worked in Anthony Weiner's campaign, which I have covered in 2005, and other some blogger New York and so they wound up hiring me. AXELROD: And that experience sort of moved you out of New York politics and international politics. SMITH: Yeah. I never left New York. I was lived in New York and I think kind of kept New York source space. I got to really know -- I mean I had a lot of sources in Washington but was -- but also a lot of people in Washington talk to a lot of reporters. So I think I -- yes. I mean I was certainly covering the Obama and the Clinton campaigns but I was always little weak on the Washington's part of it. AXELROD: Yeah. But you must have a good Clinton sources out of New York. SMITH: Yes. There were people in that orbit who were totally not on the radar of the national reporters. AXELROD: You -- having covered that campaign, I know you were in the editorial position at BuzzFeed, which we will get to in a second during this campaign. Did you see qualities in the Clinton campaign in


2008 that were apparent to you again watching the 2016 campaign unfold? SMITH: I mean I think that they had the same candidate, which was a probably a big challenge for both campaigns. People did not like her that much. AXELROD: This is the wry humor of it, one appreciates when -- you aren't writing about that you. It's always nice when you're writing about someone else. But what it is? What were the qualities that ultimately were defeating for -- I mean -- SMITH: You know, I mean -- AXELROD: … some of the other factors. SMITH: They were different, right? Because I think in 2008, they were operationally incompetent, like they should -- I feel like you -- I mean one of the things you learn covering these campaigns is how contingent it all is, right? I mean Obama ran a great campaign in 2008. You guys had such a strong -- like there were so many reasons that have to do with the vast sweep of history and what people wanted and the hope he changes, stuff why you guys win. But also if she had paid any attention in Idaho, she might have won. I mean there were all these also nitty-gritty operational things and you do see like wow, like the course of history turns on whether these idiots managed to like staff up and some, you know, and understand the caucus system or not, which they had managed not to. AXELROD: Yes. That was such an -- that's such an interesting point because they pretty much, you know, just to make a boxing analogy, George Foreman fought Mohammed Ali in 1974. The Rumble in the Jungle, right? They fought in Africa and Ali strategy was just to -- Foreman had knocked everybody out like the first and second round and Ali strategy was just to hang around until he punched himself out. [00:35:11] The Clinton campaign thought they would have this thing wrapped up in the first four contests and the Obama campaign, of which I was part but I wasn't the inspiration behind this element of it, really focused on the other 46 contests and particularly these caucuses, which for very little you -- if you have a lot of energy on -- at the grassroots, you could organize them and dominate them and get a cash of delegates into the party rules in a state like Idaho. I think the day we won the Idaho caucus is we got as many delegates net out of Idaho as she got out of New Jersey. SMITH: Yes, and there was the day that she won Nevada in the popular votes that we all cared about. And then I ran at the airport in Las Vegas flying out with David Plouffe and Jeff Berman are on the phone explaining -- AXELROD: Berman was a delegate counter, Plouffe was the manager -- SMITH: … because some districts had odd-number delegates -- odd numbers of delegates and some number -- some had even numbers of delegates. It was effectively a tie in all the districts we depend any attention to which had even numbers, but that in the, you know, the Elko district of north, which was an odd number district, Obama had won and thus actually gotten the margin out of the state and he had won the state even though he -- AXELROD: By one delegate. SMITH: And the time we were all kind of dismissive of it like this delegate stuff felt like nonsense. But --


yes, but I think in a way, you know, the loss in '08 was partly that people didn't love her but partly that they just kind of screwed up operationally. And I do think they, to a fault, decided not to make that mistake again, right? Like if there was one thing, one mistake, they -- one thing they got right in 2016, it was like the delegates in the primary. They nailed that. AXELROD: Ye, they did -- SMITH: They brought in your guy. AXELROD: Yes, right. In fact Berman was working for them -- SMITH: Yes. AXELROD: … in 2006. SMITH: But they kind of fought the last war. So I don't think it was exactly that they reran the same mistakes. It was almost that they overcompensated for the technical mistakes this made that was maybe part of it. AXELROD: In terms of her though, you're a student of people. What is the -- what was the quality in her that was a barrier? SMITH: You know, I don't think -- I'm not sure it was a quality. I think almost more that it was the absence of something, like a sort of -- she was never able to communicate convincingly what she cared about and why she thought -- why she should-- what her sort of like burning mission to be president was the people can identify with. So I'm not sure there was any one thing. I mean obviously there was a level of kind of paranoia and secretiveness that comes in and somewhat understandable way from her life but also has been element of their world, but it does feel like there is more that something was missing that you usually -- usually to get to where she was. You've gotten there, but you've got a kind of burning mission or particular kind of craziness or vision and never was clear that she had that. AXELROD: Yes. I mean, it also is true that she in her dealings with people like you was cautious to a fault and it's hard to connect with people through the filter that the media is if you're very guarded. SMITH: I covered her really for, I guess, 13 years and been all the time I was really covering sort of the machine in an organization and you are sort of trying to peer thrall that for flashes of who the human being. I think Ruby Cramer actually probably did a better job than anybody last cycle. She -- I think she's the only one who really tried to do a profile of Hillary Clinton because it's so hard, right? I mean they just -- it's not something that she naturally submits herself to or been to herself to. AXELROD: Yes. And, you know, whatever you think about Donald Trump and mostly everybody thinks something about Donald Trump. The one thing people never say about him is, "Man, I wish he'd speak his mind." SMITH: Yes. Somebody asked me today if you had one question for Donald Trump, what would it be? And I thought, you know, I think I know what he thinks about everything. I can even think of a question like I -- like he answers every question about himself constantly in public. AXELROD: We're going to take another break. We'll be right back with Ben Smith.


So you made the good the big leap to BuzzFeed from Politico, talk about that decision. I mean, it looks like an active genius now because you've got this incredible moneymaking machine that has a trillion followers or something and so on. SMITH: That's how we like to see ourselves. AXELROD: Yes. I read off the sheet you gave me. But what made you decide to take that leap? SMITH: So I had a blog and covered most -- a lot of my coverage of you guys in a way was on this blog and it was incredibly fun to be kind of using the tool of blogging to do, not actually traditional reporting, but in a more incremental, kind of fast-moving, possibly type or a written way, then I had done -- traditional media had done. [00:40:14] And also there's this very vibrant ecosystem of people like Nate Silver and Ezra Klein, you know, Andrew Sullivan and you'd be trying to get them to link you and you'd be linking to them and you'd be attacking them and they'd be attacking you and it was all cool as long as they give you a nice link and drive you some traffic. And it was very like dynamic ecosystem. I remember I -- it was addictive and kind of exhausting. And it was if you wanted to get the latest news, you have a feed where you're checking all these blogs all the time, you know. I went away from my desk for a couple of hours and got back and people were e-mailing me like are you dead? Are you OK? And that -- you know, and I was sort of gripped by that, felt so totally immediate and connected to the audience. And then, you know, 2010, 2011 or the healthcare fight, you could just feel. It was before you really saw this happened in the traffic, you could just feel all the energy flowing out of that ecosystem into Twitter, all your rivals, your sources, your readers, your crazy harassing commenters, that whole ecosystem just on mass moved over to Twitter. It was a much better tool for fighting with people and distributing news. You know, the blogging thing was kind of like it was hard to know -- it was not centralized in the same way. RSS was sort of a hack for that. But so -- and -- but -- and so the blog went from feeling like this incredibly immediate connection to an audience to feeling like a beast you had to feed, like printed had been, like the website had been honestly like I don't want to write like the big front page summary of what happened today for the website. I'd rather be kind of break news. And the thing about the blogging that have been so great was the connection to the audience. Most of my sources were just random readers who e-mail me once with the tip, not professional Politicos with an agenda and it's just felt that that whole ecosystem had moved to Twitter and the satisfying thing to do is to break some news and watch it spread on Twitter. AXELROD: So did you approach -- SMITH: And so when Jonah Peretti approached me and said -- AXELROD: The founder of BuzzFeed. SMITH: The founder of BuzzFeed -- with what was, you know, to my eye, a kind of combination of kind of weird, funny videos, and like the world's leading cat site. AXELROD: Yes. SMITH: And by the way, we are -- we remain. I think we still hold --


AXELROD: Yes, yes, I know. SMITH: But -- AXELROD: Some use that against you. SMITH: Yes. But only sociopaths. AXELROD: And dog lovers. SMITH: Right, dog lovers. But, you know, it is like in "Blade Runner", the way they determine who's a human and who's an android and he flips the turtle over and it's because it's like a defining characteristic of human to have empathy for animals. So, Jonah, -- but what it really was, was experiment with the idea that your audience are people who at that point open their browser and open Facebook, open Twitter, open StumbleUpon in that day, open Pinterest, aren't necessarily going to your website. And then -- and the challenge of what kind of media can you do that get into somebody's Facebook feed because they're good enough, not that just you click on it, but that you share it, is an interesting and different challenge and it's one that I was -- in a very non-intellectual, non-abstract way was doing with Twitter. I want to break news and get retweets, you know, and tell people something they didn't know. Jonah, I think, was thinking about it very abstract kind of theoretical sense and the team there was working really with -- they kind of find the web culture content. But the basic idea that -- what you're doing is not a website, it's distributed media, the people are going to share for reasons that are about them. Not about some sort of product that you're putting out. You know, it felt very much where I was and that's why I want to repost it. AXELROD: And they approached you to do it? SMITH: Yes. AXELROD: Did you realize at the time that how big it was going to be? SMITH: No. My old boss at the "Observer", Peter Kaplan had persuaded me that I -- and he was their first choice for that gig actually. And he -- I think -- AXELROD: What is it with you that you're -- oh everybody is second and third choice? SMITH: I don't know. I feel like (inaudible). But he had said and he had great job at Conde Nast, but there were some kitties to be a blogger who he knew who might be good. And so he said to me and it's true that, you know, politics is sort of the media business. I mean you have always straddled those worlds and know that. And that -- and the presidential campaigns are this unique opportunity for a media voice to break through. And in fact every presidential cycle sort of gives birth to a new one in 2004. I guess it was the note in 2008. It was Politico and "Huffington Post". And you can sort of come up and define yourself around the political campaign in a way that I think is difficult at other moments because it's such a central narrative. It's so competitive. It's so clear. You can -- there's a scoreboard, you know who's winning, you know who is telling compelling stories, there so much attention. And so I think he persuaded me that -- in 2012, there is an opportunity to have BuzzFeed be the sort of break out voice of that cycle.


[00:45:07] AXELROD: You know that criticism -- you mentioned Andrew Sullivan, he's been -- it wouldn't be -- you wouldn't be unique. Andrew has offered sharp critiques of people in politics and media, institutions of all sorts. But there are all kinds of critiques of BuzzFeed but the main one goes to this notion of click bait and that, you know, you're after repetition, you're after eyeballs but the content is less important than the numbers themselves and you develop algorithms to try and decide which stuff will be more viral and maybe it's out of jealousy. I don't know but traditional journalists would say you are right, the story that needs to be written, not the story that you think you are right because it's going to get re-click more. SMITH: You know, I actually never knew any journalists who didn't care if anybody read their stories. I don't really buy that notion that there were reporters who thought, you know what, I'm going to write this, I'm going to stick at my desk drawer and I will feel good about the fact that I wrote this story. You want stories that hit and sometimes that -- and often that means reaching a huge audience because it's incredibly compelling. You know, that also -- and we also -- we -- and like I said, it's not something I'd apologize for. I do think one of the things that -- we always done news and entertainment. We -- I think didn't define that as clearly early on, the idea that there was something called entertainment on the web in the era before web video really took off. Seemed kind of odd, but I don't -- I certainly -- you know, once in a while, somebody would tweet at me like some quiz about, you know, kangaroos, and say like this isn't journalism and that is clearly the case, like we are not submitting that for a Pulitzer Prize. That is entertainment. And we do this -- we do a spectrum of those things. We reorganize recently to sort of -- so that organizationally news and entertainment are separate which is kind of valuable on the news guide and primarily and that's what I said in my time thinking about now. But I think that there is also was this kind of snobbery that was, you know, a feature of the very late newspaper industry, like for a long time in the newspaper industry and we certainly worked in newspapers that cared a lot about whether people read them that were competitive businesses that were driven in part by trying to reach a huge audience, like every great newspaper was born that way. I think as newspapers in the late days of newspapers, there was sometimes this snobbery about, oh well. Our job actually isn't to reach readers and touch people. It's to fill in newspaper and if there's something grubby about caring about your audience, I think that's actually kind of gone now, like I now find myself telling my reporter -- my editors look like, I understand that you think this headline is a little informal but we are not going to be more conservative than the "Washington Post". AXELROD: Yes. Well, obviously, newspapers are now adapting and adjusting to the world as you guys have seen because they need to get -- SMITH: And I think it's the world as it is. AXELROD: But -- I guess the question is as an editor, are there things for -- let's just go back to that story you wrote in 2007, that very, very good story from Iowa. Is that something that you would -- would that be a story that you'd be interested in as an editor now? SMITH: For sure. We just hired a grade -- you know, we -- I think we just hired a great reporter based in Cleveland to cover Republican politics for us and help tell stories about what's going on with the Republican Party and Henry Gomez, Ruby Kramer tells the stories about the Democratic Party. I think that the -- one of the things that has changes, there are certain genres and sort of medium-sized newspaper articles that say here's what happened yesterday and here's like a paragraph of bullshit, that purporting to be analysis about what it means. You know, that nobody wants and probably were never of


massively redeeming social value. And so, where I've been push -- where I push my team is toward in both directions away from that one hand to like get the scoop, get a piece of information or an entertaining tidbit that is sort of small and fast and clear. Or, on the other hand, like spend a year and a half nailing a huge investigation about actually this week republishes huge story about a cop in Chicago who allegedly framed 51 people for murder (inaudible) by Chicago standards is a lot. You know, but that's not -- that's a story that takes -- AXELROD: There's been a history without, you know, here in Chicago. SMITH: So I hear. But that story takes months, not weeks, but I think in this incredibly crowded, noisy space medium-sized things don't cut through. And so it actually pushes you, I think, to do both. It should just sometimes spend -- invest a lot more resources than media typically does in getting a story that will really cut through. [00:50:01] AXELROD: What kind of resources do you have? I read you have 250 people on your staff. SMITH: Yes, we have about 275 reporters around the world. Some of them not writing, some of them writing for local audiences and other countries, but, you know, well over 200 writing for us sort of global English language audience. AXELROD: And -- SMITH: Writing and shooting video and, you know -- AXELROD: And where do you get that -- SMITH: … to be honest. AXELROD: Where do you get that? Where do you recruit for from? And how -- you know, there used to be this hierarchy in newsrooms where you would learn as you and I did, as you and I did that -- you know, from veteran reporters, from -- what about your group? SMITH: You know, we tried to and I think it mostly succeeded in having people with a really huge range of backgrounds, which ranges from people who really came up on the web without experience in traditional newsrooms to people who have tons of, you know, who come out of it. I mean I come out of a newspaper culture and I think to some degree if there's a divide that is expressing self in some ways online, when newspaper peel and magazine people and I think we do come out of the kind of non-perfectionist, iterative newspaper culture. But yes -- AXELROD: How extensive are your editors -- (CROSSTALK) SMITH: But the reason we've been able to hire -- AXELROD: … speed thing going here. SMITH: We've always all had a speed thing. I mean I think -- AXELROD: Yes, but we also have a -- we have auditions, you know. So you've got a little time to read this --


(CROSSTALK) SMITH: Nobody noticing when we got things horribly wrong in print. The -- no Twitter to call you at. The -- you know, I mean the way we've been able to attract I think great reporters by having very strong editors and editors who reporters admire in his career or interested to them. You know, our world editor hem off in our world editor Miriam Elder was The Guardians Moscow corresponded for years. Mark Schoofs, our investigations editor won a Pulitzer at The Village Voice then was at the Journal and ProPublica for years. So I think, you know, I think there was this moment -- there's kind of hollowing out of editors in the early 2000's as the sort of print industry declined. AXELROD: Yes. SMITH: The easiest thing to do is to fire the editors like nobody notices at first. And then there was this idea I think both reporters felt liberated by editors like cool, you can just go blog and then news companies thought, oh, we can just like hire kids who don't know anything, just to blog and I think that was terrible for a lot of reporters' careers honestly because you don't learn. And I think that by the time I started in 2011, 2012 smart young reporters knew they wanted editors and were looking for a place that would give -- where they would learn and there been potential and it's kind of swung back a bit. And I think that something that in recruiting is always what I sort of try to offer. AXELROD: One person who seems to have gotten the gestalt of these times media wise is Donald Trump who used Twitter in a way no candidate has ever used and continues to but also a hard guy to deal with because of his relativism about facts. How do you, as an editor, deal with him? SMITH: You know, I don't really deal with him a lot personally. We communicate through him calling as a failing pile of garbage on television. But -- AXELROD: I mean he is a guy who has used the same attitude about politics that you've expressed about journalism and that give what they want. I mean, and he really understands the market. He understands the mix between news and entertainment. I mean somewhat say he's the sort of -- he is a political corollary of the modern media environment that you guys reflect. SMITH: You know I see it differently. I think he's two -- kind of remarkable degree, a creature of the 1980s, media culture. I mean, he's -- he came up in the New York tabloid world very deeply and cares more about television than any political figure or consultant or anything I've talked to in 15 years. AXELROD: And watches more apparently. SMITH: And watches more, right. I mean I think he uses -- the thing that has been remarkable is I think his ability to kind of merge those two things and use Twitter to program, particularly during the camp -- the primary campaign to program cable news. And if you look at cable news, it is largely people reading Donald Trump tweets a lot. I mean I think they have -- post-election, I think there's been a lot of soul-searching. But I think he's a -- he is sort of in a way used his -- the strength of his voice on social media to kind of bully a kind of somewhat desperate declining legacy media. And I think again I think that's correct probably he breathed new life into the legacy media. AXELROD: It seems to me that media is more energetic today than it's been in decades.


SMITH: Oh, no, I agree. I think this is a pretty remarkable moment, partly because, you know, like the -- out things like the evening news, which felt like they were on a long slow kind of genteel decline. The president of United States is freaking out about them every day and like that's pretty energizing. [00:55:04] AXELROD: Yes. And they're edgier than they used to be. SMITH: Yes. And, yes. And I think in an odd way, he has single-handedly like restored this and postponed the collapse of sort of a fair share of legacy media. AXELROD: You got his attention earlier in the year when you published this dossier that was developed by a former British intelligence agency for some opposition researchers who were involved in 2016 campaign that included some fairly salacious charges. CNN did a piece that noted that the intelligence chiefs had briefed Trump on a summary of it, but they didn't publish the entire thing. You guys did took some criticism for -- from him, but also from others. Why did you decide to do it? And was it -- well this is interesting, this will get clicks? SMITH: I think there were two reasons. You know, one is and I think this is something that every, you know, reporters of all kinds of very sense wrestle with is, you know, we attend this document a bit later than other outlet. I think the Times had it in the summer. We got it in December. And we're trying to run down and verify parts of it. And then -- but it also at the same time became clear that this wasn't just, you know, we all get e-mails every day, making crazy allegations, you do not just print this. But that this was an object that was in play. This was being the subject of a real tug-of-war at the highest levels of power, dozens of journalists, intelligence officials, legislators, the president of United States, the president-elect had been briefed on it. Harry Reid and others were starting to act -- AXELROD: Many people had it. SMITH: People had not just had it, people were acting based on it. Like it was hard to understand why Harry Reid had set a certain public letter to James Comey if you didn't have this document. Like -- and then there were all sorts of decisions being made, and stories coming out that were obliquely based on it. And so I think there was argument for publishing that we are starting to have. CNN -- (CROSSTALK) AXELROD: … you couldn't verify any of the facts in it. SMITH: CNN then -- right. And that's -- and obviously there's -- there are -- like the question of when you put out an allegation with the word alleged and when you don't is something journalist deal with constantly every day. And anytime you see the word alleged, what you're reading is we did not verify this. The thing that for us pushed it clearly over the line was that CNN came out and said not just there is this dossier, they didn't briefed him, but they stated the two central claims that the Russians have compromising material on Donald Trump and the Donald Trump's aides have had secret, top secret context of Russian intelligence. I really do understand the argument for not publishing this and continuing to chase that and that's where we were and I understand the argument. I don't totally understand the argument for walking out halfway, saying we have a secret document. Here is a hazy and kind of sinister summary of the main charges. We will not tell you what they are. We will not let you see it and evaluate it. But we're just going to tease it out for you and make it sound actually, to me, a lot more sinister.


AXELROD: Well I think I think that the reasoning would not to represent CNN because, you know, I'm affiliated with -- SMITH: Oh gosh, I forgot you're a CNN employee. AXELROD: Yes, but that's OK. That's all right. But was that -- the news event was that the president been briefed on it. And so -- SMITH: If they had repeated the charges that would make sense. The president has been briefed on it. We're not going to tell you what's in it. OK. AXELROD: Well, but that would have been an odd thing to -- but we don't -- SMITH: Yes. AXELROD: We don't need to -- SMITH: That is how we think about it more broadly. AXELROD: Now it turns out that a lot of -- a number of the elements of it have gotten a lot more serious attention as this investigation -- SMITH: Yes. I mean there were a lot of factors, the seriousness of the author was also part of it, right? This wasn't some flaky person. I was somebody -- AXELROD: Right, highly regarded intelligent -- SMITH: But that's -- I mean there are complicated decisions. I mean I do think from our perspective, we think that our responsibility is to our audience and the question we're asking is not so much what will other reporters think or what will Donald Trump think. But if you're a reader of BuzzFeed, do we think you can handle this. Is there some reason that like I have a special glasses that allow me to see this because I am a trained journalist, but if you are member of the audience see this, it will skull dries out because you don't know how to handle unverified claims. And I think actually that is a -- for better or for worse, and arguably for worse, just the feature of the media environment. Now our audiences are swimming in all kinds of information, and we all have the choice of do you say, you know what, the traditional postures, I'm not going to touch this stuff. There is a rumor out there that Barack Obama is a Muslim. It's incredibly toxic. It's clearly false. I'm hearing it everywhere but like my job as a journalist is just to stay away from it or at some point, do try to engage it and debunk it or do you report that that's a feature of the campaign. I mean this is something I think we both wrestled with in 2007. And I think, you know, your -- there's this impulse to be the gatekeeper but you're standing there at the gate and there's just water flowing past on both sides. And that's I think that's sort of ecosystem and we see our role as in a way less, not as a gatekeeper but as a kind of a guide through that kind of crazy, in some ways, very polluted mess. [01:00:14] AXELROD: Pew did a poll -- you probably been haunted by questions about this, but Pew did a poll about the trusted news sources. BuzzFeed was sort of down at the bottom -- SMITH: I think that was 2014 data, so that's like -- AXELROD: So you're more trusted now?


SMITH: I hope so. I mean -- SMITH: Why do you think you were there and do you think you corrected whatever creative -- (CROSSTALK) SMITH: … that poll. And I think broadly, this is true. The majority of people had no opinion on whether or not you trust BuzzFeed in 2013. It was an old -- it's an old poll. And I think, you know, we came in as a news organization in this odd posture of having a huge audience who really liked BuzzFeed and related to us. But I think for a lot of people, we were a source of -- really purely a source of entertainment. I mean when I started, that's what we were. AXELROD: OK. SMITH: And so to say, do you trust this quiz about kangaroos is like a category error. It's like saying, you know, do you trust this primetime drama, like no, it's entertainment. You don't asked that questioning I think. So we have -- I mean, it's obviously an advantage to come in with people liking you and then say, hey, we hope you'll trust -- AXELROD: So your job is to build that bridge to new -- SMITH: Yes, for sure. And I think for a lot of -- for people who follow politics closely and other stories closely or for people who are reporting has kind of touched directly. You know, we're building that trust, but also it's, you know, we've been -- we have been doing as long as some of our -- as some others, and so we realize it will take a little while. AXELROD: So I don't begrudge your success and what is undoubtedly fantastic wealth that will flow your way for being part of this growing enterprise, but I'm deeply resentful about one thing, which is your crowd me in this podcast space now, you've started this podcast called Newsfeed with Newsfeed Ben. SMITH: BuzzFeed Ben. AXELROD: BuzzFeed Ben, I'm sorry. Newsfeed with BuzzFeed Ben. SMITH: Yes. AXELROD: And it's -- we're going to record an episode of it as soon as we finish this one and we're going to post both of them on Thursday. So why have to come into my space man? SMITH: You know, I've always been a reporter and I'm sure as you -- and as I've like to become an editor, I'll go crazy if I don't have an excuse to bother people and interview them and so this podcast is, you know, I hope my excuse to grill people about the stuff I'm obsessed with, which is media tech, politics and in the way in which they're all -- kind of intersecting now more and more. You know, we have really essential media figure as president of the United States. And so that's -- I think that story is a great story and I get to harass people like you about it. AXELROD: Well, in the interest of keeping you seen, then I will accept the fact that you're going to have a podcast. SMITH: I appreciate this. Please consider it therapeutic. AXELROD: OK. Appreciate being with you and look forward to that chat.


SMITH: Thanks, David. AXELROD: Ben Smith of BuzzFeed. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Thank you for listening to "The Axe Files", part of the CNN podcast network. For more episodes of "The Axe Files", visit cnn.com/podcast and subscribe on iTunes, Stitcher or your favorite app. And for more programming from the University of Chicago Institute of Politics, visit politics.uchicago.edu.

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The Axe Files - Ep. 136: Ben Smith · Ep. 136 – Ben Smith 1 The Axe Files - Ep. 136: Ben Smith Released April 6, 2017 [00:00:06] UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: And now, from the University