Ben Smith: Acclaimed Journalist

Ben Smith

Editor-In-Chief, Semafor | Author, Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral | Formerly of Politico, Buzzfeed and The New York Times

Ben Smith is the former Editor-in-Chief at BuzzFeed and Media Columnist at the New York Times. He joined the BuzzFeed team in January 2010 and was responsible for overseeing and expanding editorial coverage and producing original content for the first true social news organization. Ben and his team changed the way people viewed the news. Before BuzzFeed, Smith was the senior political writer for POLITICO, where he wrote a daily blog that Time Magazine named one of the “Five Essential Blogs in 2010.”

Ben is the Editor-In-Chief of Semafor — an intelligent, transparent global news platform he founded in 2022.

In 2008, Ben covered the Democratic presidential primary, focusing on Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Before POLITICO, he was a columnist and blogger for the New York Daily News. Ben was also behind New York’s first political blog, The Politicker, for the New York Observer. He also started the political site, Room Eight, after working as City Hall Bureau Chief for the New York Sun.

Ben Smith has written for many leading publications, including the Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, Slate, The New York Post, The New Republic, Legal Affairs, Reason and In These Times.

Ben graduated Summa Cum Laude from Yale University with a degree in LInguistics. A Manhattan native, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife and three children.

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In unrelated news, Ben interviewed Obama in early 2015 for BuzzFeed’s first presidential interview.

TOPICS

The BuzzFeed Story: How The Social Web Has Transformed Media

As the Editor-In-Chief of BuzzFeed, Ben Smith was on the front lines of a rapidly changing media landscape. In his presentation, he takes audiences behind the scenes of BuzzFeed’s disruptive and forward-thinking social approach, one that has led to hundreds of millions of unique visitors every month. Through his experiences, observations and specific case studies, Ben learned how to reach and earn credibility with this new generation of readers, one who is more likely to read something their friend shares on Twitter or Facebook than a newspaper’s front page. Combining original content, aggregation, and a mix of hard-hitting and humorous stories, Ben Smith is at the helm of a “viral–content machine” redefining journalism.

Hosting and Moderating

Ben Smith has moderated events large and small, interviewing everyone from Senator Marco Rubio to President Barack Obama. He is equipped to engage in a conversation with any guest or panel, discussing politics, pop culture or whatever else is on the agenda.

How we got here: The life and death of the internet, and why it matters to you?

Ben Smith was at the center of the birth of the “new” internet, and the consequences it unleashed. .His widely-praised new book “Traffic” details the events and people who shaped modern culture to tell what he calls “the origin story of the age of disinformation.” In this talk, Ben Smith asks the question: how did we get here? He discusses the unintended consequences of the last decade, explaining them through the lens of some giant new media companies. He then explains how these shifts impact you and your teams, and what the way forward might be.

“Ben Smith’s new book shows how the race for clicks spawned—then strangled—the new media . . . Illuminating” – The New Yorker