Why this weeks media meltdown was years in the making and what comes next
This week in Washington \u2013 more so than anytime in Joe Biden\u2019s presidency \u2013 the news has been all about\u2026 the news.\nTo start, it\u2019s the weekend of the White House Correspondents Association Dinner. But outside of the brunches and parties, a different type of media intrigue has been dominating politics.\xa0\nBuzzFeed News, the colossus of yesteryear\u2019s viral reporting and the entity that published the infamous Steele Dossier about Donald Trump, announced that it was shutting down for good.\nOn Monday, Fox News fired Tucker Carlson, their top-rated host. Within an hour, Don Lemon announced he was parting ways with CNN, where he had worked for 17 years.\xa0\nOn Thursday, Vice News, another struggling pioneer of 21st century digital news, became the latest media company to lay off some of its best known reporters.\xa0\nThese are all isolated events with circumstances specific to each newsroom. But in an excellent new book called Traffic: Genius, Rivalry, and Delusion in the Billion-Dollar Race to Go Viral,\xa0 Ben Smith argues that we are indeed at the end of an era in media, but that the next one might be something to look forward to.\xa0\nThat\u2019s a forceful prediction coming from Ben, who was a longtime reporter at POLITICO, the top editor at BuzzFeed News, a New York Times media columnist, and now is the editor-in-chief of Semafor. He\u2019s also this week\u2019s Playbook Deep Dive guest.\nBen\u2019s book and this interview with Deep Dive Host and Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza do their best to answer the questions we all have about why our political culture is so fragmented, and whether there is any hope that we can return to a place where Americans agree on simple things \u2014 like facts.\nRyan Lizza is a Playbook co-author for POLITICO.Ben Smith is the editor-in-chief of Semafor.Afra Abdullah is an associate producer for POLITICO audio.Kara Tabor is a producer for POLITICO audio.\xa0Alex Keeney is a senior producer for POLITICO audio.Jenny Ament is the executive producer for POLITICO audio.\n\nLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices