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Reason

Nick Gillespie

Ben Smith's One Neat Trick for Going Viral

Ben Smith Andrew Breitbart Matt Drudge BuzzFeed Internet Gawker Jonah Peretti Nick Denton BuzzFeed News Semafor

In the mid-2000s, the news media underwent rapid change, beginning a transformation from stodgy to spicy. Social media networks and trailblazing online-only news outlets changed the way everyone used the internet. Perhaps no one had a better view of the whole news landscape than Ben Smith.

Smith was the first editor in chief of the recently shuttered BuzzFeed News, a New York Times media columnist, and a co-founder of Semafor. In his new book, Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race To Go Viral, Smith charts the rise and fall of Gawker, HuffPost, Breitbart News, and BuzzFeed News.

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