Ben Smith

And like that probably is a good way to, a good like, if it seems like they're giving some kind of human sacrifice to Donald Trump in order to get regulatory approval.

Like that doesn't, I don't know, in the cynical world of big media, that seems like a decent idea.

I mean, CBS, it's like, I don't know if you've ever worked at one of these institutions which has been rocked by scandal after scandal and leak after leak for longer than you've been alive.

But everything always goes badly there.

And I think people underestimate the extent to which, yeah, she is being given the job, maybe not as captain of the Titanic, but as first mate post-iceberg.

And that's a very, very challenging situation.

And I don't know, we should all be rooting for them to succeed.

Because I think the most natural thing here is that they cease to exist.

That's the course that they've been on for a long time.

So, A, look, there was no lunchroom.

It was all Slack, which did make it certainly totally insane.

And, you know, I guess I knew Barry there at the time.

And I think maybe I didn't take these things as personally.

Like, I think, you know, people react to things differently.

But I do think, you know, the Slack became some rough equivalent of Twitter, right?

And I do think the culture was more dominated by younger people who were more comfortable in social media and sometimes really did take on some of the crazier features of social media.

Like there was a 2000 person.

I wasn't allowed in most of the Slack because I wrote about the New York Times.

And so like I got tossed out of Slacks and Taylor Lorenz created a Slack called Ben Chat where people could come talk to me.

But there was one giant Slack with everybody in it.