The Gates-Kristof Lovefest, Smith's New Venture, and Ron Conway's New Year's Tantrum

Good afternoon and welcome back to The Daily Courant, bringing you the latest and most noteworthy reporting from Puck's elite team of journalists.

First up, Dylan Byers talks to Ben Smith and Justin Smith about their new media venture after the duo's long-in-the-making exits from The New York Times and Bloomberg. “The era of social media journalism is basically coming to an end, and there's a question of what's next,” says Ben. “The relationship of individual journalists to their audience is also changing, and I think [this new publication] will reflect that.” 

Plus, below the fold: Teddy Schleifer examines the political relationship between Melinda French Gates and Nick Kristof, the Times columnist turned Oregon gubernatorial candidate whose long friendship with America's wealthiest estranged couple just paid a five-figure dividend.

News on the Ben Smith News

Despite the sudden, and seemingly out-of-nowhere news that Ben Smith was leaving the Times, and that Justin Smith was stepping down as C.E.O. of Bloomberg Media, the Two Smiths had been quietly discussing their new media ambitions, on and off, for years. And it may take a decade to pull off. I chatted with the Smiths on the day of their big reveal.

Earlier this week, Ben Smith notified New York Times executive editor Dean Baquet that he was going to be leaving the company to pursue something different. On some level, the news couldn’t have been a shock. For months, in-the-know media people have been kibbitzing about Smith’s potential next moves. Sure, many assumed, he’d probably enjoyed a liquidity event from the initial public offering of Buzzfeed, where he’d been the editor-in-chief for nearly a decade. But perhaps more importantly, Smith has the personality of a builder, and the Times, despite its world-beating digital growth in recent years, can have an academic culture. 

But the news that he was teaming up with Justin Smith, the C.E.O. of Bloomberg Media, to create a sort of globalist, post-social media, creator-friendly and all-the-other-right-things-to-say journalistic beast was the media-world equivalent of Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving joining the Brooklyn Nets, or Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez getting back together. And it was marvelously orchestrated through a double-barreled media rollout, with Justin declaring his news, replete with a Mike Bloomberg quote, in the Journal, and the Times getting the hometown scoop on Ben (albeit with little warning).

The news is interesting, but the backstory is perhaps even more compelling. The Smiths had been talking for years—in New York, at Davos, at the Bloomberg New Economy Forum—about the opportunities for ambitious global journalism⁠, both men said in separate interviews on Tuesday morning. Those conversations took a more serious turn in early 2020, just months after Ben joined The New York Times. The two met at a French bistro in Manhattan to map out the strategy for a global publication that, according to Justin, aspires to become “the leading, multi-platform news brand for the whole English-speaking world.” They kept their conversations closely guarded for nearly two years. In early December, Ben dismissed an inquiry into plans for a new venture as a “rumor” that wasn’t true...

FOUR STORIES WE'RE TALKING ABOUT