In this week’s episode we discuss feedback about Ben’s Android criticism, then dive into Andreessen Horowitz’s $50 million investment into BuzzFeed. Is there a real business here? We also discuss native advertising: Ben is quite a bit more optimistic than James.
Links
- Ben Thompson: Is BuzzFeed a Technology Company? – Stratechery
- Chris Dixon: BuzzFeed – Chris Dixon’s Blog
- Marc Andreessen: Introducing our new venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz – Blog Pmarca
- Ben Casselman: Corporate America Hasn’t Been Disrupted – 538
Hosts
- Ben Thompson, @monkbent, Stratechery
- James Allworth, @jamesallworth, Harvard Business Review
Podcast Information
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Objectivity is something that came in with the AP wire service, according to this article:
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/1999/pulpit_19991007_000626.html
AP wanted to sell the same story to both right wing and left wing newspapers.
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Maybe James is closer to seeing “how the sausage is made” with news on the Internet than with traditional print and broadcast media news.
In the old days, Henry Luce, owner of Time magazine, had lunch every day with Alan Dulles, director of the CIA, in a private club in New York City. No firewall there. Time magazine readers did not know of this when they were reading the news.
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With traditional media in the US, there were only about a dozen basic plots or stories. Everything that happened in real life had to fit into one of the dozen story lines that the readers would easily understand. Any attempt to tell a new or different story simply would not make print or broadcast.
Ask any specialist about a mass media story about their specialty and the answer was always, “they got it wrong.” Same thing with any participant in a major news event.
On the Internet, there are people and institutions that are close to their subject, well informed, and who have the desire and ability to tell the truth, or at lest try to. Sure, 90 percent of the Internet media get things wrong, deliberately and with varying amounts of malicious intent. However, it’s a lot easier for the 10 percent to publish and to find their audience now than it was before the Internet.