Ben Smith

The through-line

Ben Smith's recurring argument is that the media environment most people treat as normal was a technological accident, and that its collapse is neither surprising nor reversible. The mid-century world of three broadcasters and a handful of metropolitan papers existed "for very specific technological reasons, like it's really expensive to put up a broadcast tower and there's only so much spectrum," which produced "sort of centrist news monopolies" and "incredible cash machines of businesses" [1]. Those conditions are gone, and what has replaced them is not a break with history but a return to it: "maybe I'm a little fatalistic, but it feels like a kind of reversion to the norm of history," back to "hyperpartisan news that you can't trust" [1]. He is fatalistic about the general condition and unfatalistic about the specific business, arguing that the answer is not to police the whole information ecosystem but to build deliberately for the minority of readers who still need accuracy. The same instinct runs through his weekly examination of why audiences see and hear what they see and hear, made with media reporter Max Tani [2].

On the failure of fact-checking

Smith is blunt that the industry's first response to disinformation was wrong: the turn to fact-checkers was "a mistake" [1]. The implicit reasoning sits alongside his acceptance that "there are a lot of people for whom news doesn't have to be true" [1]. Correcting a claim does not help an audience that was never buying the product on the basis of its truth. His conclusion is a segmentation argument rather than a crusade: "there's a subset of people who actually do want the news to be true and that's who we write for" [1].

On writing for people who can't afford to be lied to

The commercial expression of that idea is a deliberately narrow target: a "leadership audience who can't afford to be lied to," people who "aren't interested in experiencing news as like hyperpartisan entertainment, but need to make decisions" [1]. The revenue follows from the directness of that connection, executed "in advertising and in events in a really big way" [1]. Asked whether this simply means writing for elites, he hesitated over whether the word is "a safe word" without rejecting the substance [1]. He also pushes back on being cast as old-fashioned for building a media company with staff reporters, arguing that the model is "in fact ahead of the curve" [1].

On what Substack can and cannot do for reporters

Smith takes the Substack shift seriously while identifying precisely where it fails a certain kind of journalist. Scoop-driven reporters are badly served by direct subscription because loyalty depends on agreement: "if you're not an opinionator, if you're somebody who's just out there getting scoops, it's actually a little hard to build a Substack audience because you might not tell them what they want on any given week. Like turns out the good guy might be the bad guy" [1]. Beyond audience economics, there is infrastructure: "reporting requires some legal support," and when fights get big "you kind of want a brand you can sort of hide behind sometimes," because reporting is "kind of a team sport" [1]. His recruiting pitch is to keep both halves, giving reporters "a newsletter that's hitting an audience very very directly, speaking in their own voice," while retaining "the sort of organizational support of a newsroom" [1].

On transparency replacing the performance of objectivity

The freedom he offers writers is not licence to opine but permission to say what they think, which he frames as honesty rather than a loosening of standards: "I just see it as more transparent" [1]. Everyone already knows "every news reporter has an opinion," and he adds that this is truest of "the best ones, the really expert ones" [1]. What he objects to is the convention at legacy outlets where a reporter is "not allowed" to state a view directly and must smuggle it in [1].

On subscription fatigue and the pull back toward bundles

Smith thinks the unbundled subscription economy is self-limiting for a mundane reason: "I think it can't last. I think it's too annoying" [1]. The pricing is incoherent to consumers, since "even my favorite substack, it costs me the same as like the Wall Street Journal" [1]. The result is consolidation, in streaming through studio mergers and in odd corners of the market, such as a Verizon phone purchase carrying a bundled Netflix and HBO offer that both companies apparently agreed to "because subscriptions are so valuable" [1]. He reads that as "consumer pressure just to like there's too much of this stuff, we got to simplify," and expects the logic to reach newsletters: "I assume at some point you'll get a Substack all-you-can-create thing" [1]. Behind the phone-carrier bundles is a retention problem, since subscribers churn month to month on streaming but almost never cancel a phone plan, which is why streamers have begun asking carriers for help renewing [1].

On whether the new landscape is a meritocracy

He allows that talent can now surface without gatekeepers, calling it "a form of meritocracy" while refusing to pretend the field is level, given how many people in media "all go to Yale and to Harvard and they have powerful parents" [1].

Takeaways

• The centralised, centrist news era rested on spectrum scarcity and printing economics, and today's hyperpartisan fragmentation is "a kind of reversion to the norm of history" [1].
• Fact-checking as the industry's answer to disinformation was "a mistake," because a large share of the audience does not require the news to be true [1].
• Build for the minority who do: a leadership audience that "can't afford to be lied to" and needs news for decisions, monetised through advertising and events [1].
• Scoop reporters struggle on direct-subscription platforms because they cannot reliably tell subscribers what they want to hear [1].
• Reporting needs legal cover, a brand to stand behind and colleagues, so the best model pairs a direct-voice newsletter with newsroom support [1].
• Letting reporters state their views is a transparency gain, since expert reporters already have opinions and currently disguise them [1].
• Subscription proliferation "can't last" because it is "too annoying," and bundling through carriers and mergers is the predictable correction [1].
• Streamers are turning to phone companies for distribution because phone subscriptions almost never get cancelled [1].