I’m Darren Samuelsohn, and thanks for listening to The love, journalism Show. This is the third installment of my series of podcasts (Part I and Part II) featuring former employees of The Messenger, the media startup where I worked until it imploded last week after a nine-month run.
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We are back for another dip into what happened at The Messenger with two journalists who know what it takes to get you to click on a story.
Until last week, Neetzan Zimmerman was the company’s chief growth officer and the behind-the-scenes guru doing his thing trying to pull the strings on the internet.
Ben Smith is editor-in-chief and founder of Semafor, as well as a former New York Times media columnist and author of the book ‘Traffic: Genius, Rivalry and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral.’
On today’s episode of The love, journalism Show, these two former colleagues of mine (Ben and I crossed paths back at Politico) got into a lively exchange on The Messenger’s ambitious rollout, plus its wins and its losses.
Tune in as Neetzan pulls back the curtain on some of the reader metrics that the news site was generating even as the business model ultimately sank the ship. And both journalists talk at length about their views on the future of journalism and what needs to happen for the news industry to survive into the 21st century.
Enjoy.
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Episode 17: Traffic Talk with Neetzan Zimmerman & Ben Smith