Traffic
By
Ben Smith
Read by
Ben Smith,
Ian Putnam
Release:
05/02/2023
Runtime:
10h 15m
Unabridged
Quantity:
Engrossing and suspenseful . . . Can viral political content ever be valuable political content—and vice versa? Anxiety about this question haunts Smith, and this moral seriousness is what lifts Traffic above other accounts of adventures in start-up land.
Virginia Heffernan, New York Times
“Engrossing and suspenseful." —The New York Times
“Expertly pulls readers in.” —The Guardian
“Smith sharply chronicles the revolutionary moment.” — Financial Times
The origin story of the post-truth age: the candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Nick Denton of Gawker Media and Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and BuzzFeed, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale helped release the dark forces that would overtake the internet and American society
If attention is the new oil, Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the perceptible impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000s, after the first dot-com crash but before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City, rather than Silicon Valley, might become tech’s center of gravity. There, Nick Denton’s merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti’s sunnier team at HuffPost and BuzzFeed were building the foundations of viral internet media. Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as BuzzFeed News’s editor in chief, was there to see it, and he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity underscored by dark wit.
Traffic explores one of the great ironies of our time: The internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart initially seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah were the stars. But today, anyone might wonder if the opposite wasn’t the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling reading.
“Expertly pulls readers in.” —The Guardian
“Smith sharply chronicles the revolutionary moment.” — Financial Times
The origin story of the post-truth age: the candid inside tale of two online media rivals, Nick Denton of Gawker Media and Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and BuzzFeed, whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale helped release the dark forces that would overtake the internet and American society
If attention is the new oil, Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the perceptible impact of climate change. The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000s, after the first dot-com crash but before Google, Apple, and Facebook exploded, when it seemed that New York City, rather than Silicon Valley, might become tech’s center of gravity. There, Nick Denton’s merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Peretti’s sunnier team at HuffPost and BuzzFeed were building the foundations of viral internet media. Ben Smith, who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as BuzzFeed News’s editor in chief, was there to see it, and he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity underscored by dark wit.
Traffic explores one of the great ironies of our time: The internet, which was going to help the left remake the world in its image, has become the motive force of right populism. People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart initially seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah were the stars. But today, anyone might wonder if the opposite wasn’t the case. To understand how we got here, Traffic is essential and enthralling reading.
Release:
2023-05-02
Runtime:
10h 15m
Format:
audio
Weight:
0.0 lb
Language:
English
ISBN:
9780593671047
Publisher:
Penguin Random House
Praise