What Was Digital Media? ft. Ben Smith and Taylor Lorenz
We invited Ben Smith and Taylor Lorenz to talk about the last decade of digital media—how they saw it happen, and what might come next.
Ben and Taylor are two of the savviest media thinkers there are: they’ve both been tenured reporters, but have also adapted their careers seamlessly to the age of Twitter, Substack, and the journalist-as-influencer.
Ben, previously a media columnist at the Times and editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed News, is now running his own news venture, Semafor. Taylor is currently a technology columnist at The Washington Post after writing for the The New York Times and The Atlantic. Both also have new books out this year: Ben’s Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral came out in May, and Taylor’s Extremely Online: The Untold Story of Fame, Influence, and Power on the Internet in October.
The conversation will be hosted by Jasmine Sun, co-editor-in-chief of Reboot and a product manager at Substack. For our take on Traffic and more events like this, sign up for Reboot here.