How the Media Will Change After the Election

and even the New York Times. Battles over free speech and censorship will also continue when it comes to big social media platforms. Ben Smith, media columnist at the New York Times, joins us for how the media will be changing after the election. Thanks for joining us, Ben, Thanks for having me out. After this election is going to be a lot of interesting things changing for the media.

And really, no matter who wins, the landscape has been changed throughout these last four years of President Trump's presidency, being attacked as fake news, a lot of distrust in certain ways, but he's also kind of made these legacy media eight again, so to speak, to use his verbiage. You know, he's put so much emphasis on them and such a spotlight on them that really they were booming. Business was booming in that sense. So then you wrote an article about how it is the end of an

era for the media no matter who wins. Tell us a little bit about what you're seeing on what's going to happen after this election. Well, I think you know, you had a situation whereas anybody knows, people are consuming media on their phones, not sitting down on the couch and watching broadcast news anymore. And I think Donald Trump's obsession with things like CNN, like the NBC nightly News kind of kept them more relevant than any expect anybody

expected them to be. The same is true by the way of the New York Times and the Washington Post in places like that. Just that there was a Trump's personal obsession with these legacy media kind of kept them in the center of the conversation. That there was always

a time limit on that. And I think just you know, you're already starting to see a recognition among the particularly the big broadcasters, to the future is going to be digital, and that they've really got to figure it out and take it seriously and can no longer have to stop thinking about themselves as television channels and it's a very hard transition that they've been putting off for a long time. I think when you look at the big newspaper is

one of the really interesting things. The New York Times, the Washington Post, Los Angeles Times in particular, all of their editors in chief are on the way out the door over the next months and year. Yeah, talk a little bit about that, because that's an interesting shift, right. There are people that have been in these posts for so long are going to be leaving soon depending on who comes in. It's going to change the landscape again, and how we cover presidents, how we cover just everyday

occurrences in life. So all that's going to change. So tell us a little bit about what you're hearing on that front. I think there are really two different things

going on. One is that you have a generation of leaders who really see, you know, our newspaper men Marty Baron at the Washington posting Decay at the Times and Norman Pearlstein at the Los Angeles Times, and who really oversaw a fairly painful transition from newsrooms that were print newspapers to digital brands, and those transitions, at least at the Post in the Times are close are getting close to being complete, and there's an opportunity for new leaders

to come in and really fully inhabit this new world rather than having to manage transition to it. And then I think right there these big questions around does the media pull back toward a more sort of conservative just the facts, ma'am approach. Then under Donald Trump, I think it was so much of Trump's politics were directly about attacking these big media brands. There wasn't much choice around

engaging him. You know. It wasn't just that he was lying and said he was lying about us and making us the focus and pulling us sort of into the arena. And I think there's a question which I think is not at all a done deal, about whether these institutions try to retreat back more toward traditional roles or whether they try to kind of like blean into this more engaged posture that, by the way, maybe drives digital subscriptions

a little better. And I think that's a big question that I don't really know the answer to how it comes out. You mentioned a little bit about how the big media giants are you going to have to really complete that transition to digital things like that, But on the other side of those things, social media and the big social media giants like Twitter and Facebook and all that. They've been coming under a lot of scrutiny recently about

censorship things like that, especially on the conservative side. And there was a term that was coined by something that you mentioned the article called the attention wars and kind of basically all these different outlets grasping for your attention everything. So how did these social media giants fit into this?

You know, I think the sort of wide open, kind of wild West era of Facebook and Twitters is and and YouTube is really ending, and they're coming under a sort of political pressure to kind of clean up the platforms, which means, by the way, marginalizing voices that had been unconventional. Means if you're looking for a conservative voice on YouTube, increasingly you're going to find Fox News, not some random

YouTuber for better or for worse. And if you're looking for a liberal voice, you're probably more likely to find MSNBC. And I think there's also sort of a wave of regulatory pressure coming that's going to make them more responsible for things maybe not from being posted on the platform, but are things that get wide distribution, for things that go viral and it's not something Americans pail a lot of attention to, but they're under a lot of pressure

in Australia and in Europe. And I think because the US traditionally doesn't regulate these platforms and it's very you know, does not regulate speech, that doesn't mean they don't have to operate in other parts of the world. And I think the practices that developed their tend to kind of bleed back into the US, and I think I think that is really ramping up. And so there's just a whole bunch of different factors that are pushing them toward

a more control the ecosystem. Doesn't this really mean censorship per se that thinks you can getting deleted? I think it means it's gonna be harder for you or for me as an outsider to come in and try to make a message spread on these platforms. And what is going on in Australia in the European Union. Obviously these companies operate across all these countries. So are these countries making specific laws that are regulating them that then in turn impacts the way we do it? You know? What's

going on there? Yeah? You know, I think we in the US have had this sort of philosophy of Wow, these new technology companies are so amazing and magical that we don't want to regulate them. We want to let them flourish. We're not going to treat them like normal businesses. We're gonna let them do whatever they want. And I think there's an argument that did help them become these

dominant world global forces and incredibly vibrant American businesses. But in Australia they're saying, well, Google is the monopoly, just like a railroad or like a port, and they put again the assigned a guy who's been his career regulating railroads and ports to like figure out how much they ought to pay to use the content of news publishers

and things like that. And in Europe there, you know, they're saying, well, if, like, if Google News is going to take a headline from a newspaper, they should pay for that headline and that stuff that he's sort of unthinkable here, but they're there. They don't really see any reason to treat these tech companies any different from any other company. They're just making some laws and demanding they

follow them. One last thing that I wanted to ask as well that you mention your article when we're talking about all these different types of media now even pay

for media. There's a place called sub stack, which you mentioned, is kind of like a Twitter premium where people can kind of subscribe to journalists, their favorite journalists or whatnot, and continue to get their newsletters and their con t How does this figure into the future of media and how and how it will be changing as these big social media giants sort of consolidate and make it harder for independent voices and outsiders to cut through, you know,

whether those are really creative, interesting, constructive voices or people spreading hate. Meanwhile, there are these tools that allow individuals to go direct to their consumers in a in a way that isn't controllable I think by the big central platforms, and I think you're in sub stack and email newsletter

platform is one of those. But they're just technical tools now that allow you or me to start a newsletter, start a video channel, and if we have a lot of people who like our content, to get paid doing it. And it's sort of easy now in a way that it used to be hard. I think you'll see, you know, both big stars and kind of knit people who have small but passionate follow us start to go that way. Well, everything's going to change after the election. Will see how

it all plays out. Ben Smith, media columnist at The New York Times, thank you very much for joining us, Thanks for having me out. I'm Oscar Romes and this has been reopening America. Don't forget that. For today's big news stories, you can check me out on the Daily Dive podcast every Monday Friday. So follow us on I Heart Radio or wherever you get your podcast.