Ben Smith, Pragmatist

by Maria Bustillos

What with Ben Smith’s views on journalistic ethics so much in the news in recent days, I realized I’d spoken on a panel with him on this very topic almost exactly four years ago, before the election—in the middle of the plague!—and before J6! We’d been invited by Kyle Pope to discuss “Assessing a journalism that doesn’t work” at a virtual event hosted by the Columbia Journalism Review. While I think Ben’s position on the matter of sexting with sources is absurd (there’s an excellent rundown on that in the Indignity piece linked above), I’ve long appreciated his refusal to put the profession of journalism on a pedestal. His preference for getting down to brass tacks appeals to me, though obviously, as this episode demonstrated, it can go too far. 

But it’s Ben’s refusal to believe that journalism can change for the better, so clearly visible in this exchange, that I disagree with entirely now, just exactly as I did then.

Ben affects a world-weary cynicism and is prone to both-sidesing, but at least his long career has demonstrated that he understands that there is a left and that it’s worth hearing from. Still, he appears to believe that the world is pretty bad, we have to take it as it is, as journalists, and accept that money is tainted, wherever it comes from.

With respect to new business models for journalism, he said:

I think the sort of models where journalists who are with small publications that are kind of owning their own work, like Brick House, like Defector—and where the audience is very intensely involved with the work—you can kind of see that that’s working, and that there’s excitement around it. Almost by definition, there’s not the kind of money there was sort of floating around like there was for places like BuzzFeed and Vox and others, you know, five years ago, and so you’re not going to see hiring sprees at the same level.

I also think nonprofit news is really kind of finding its feet; and that is a big, untapped form of civic engagement basically, rich people in big cities are starting to think of giving to local news organizations as like giving to the ballet, or giving to the opera, or giving to museums—again, that creates its own problematic dynamics, where the local rich people own your publication, more or less, they sit on your board, and, you know. None of these models are necessarily that pure.

Okay but if you want to accept that the money for journalism can come only from impure sources, and the world is what it is, perhaps that is how you wind up getting $10 million from Sam Bankman-Fried, which then has to be replaced by money from, among others, Henry Kravis, and the Koch-funded organization Stand Together.

The clip above plays from late in our conversation and is funny and sad, and the answer is, now as then, to give actual writers more money.