"I have come to appreciate both ambitious design & technical stability."

Today’s Scatter Brain is brought to you by Secureframe

Secureframe helps companies achieve fast SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI, HIPAA, NIST, and GDPR compliance. With their guided workflows and one-click integrations, Secureframe automates the compliance process so you can focus on your customers, closing deals, and growing revenue.

Secureframe helps organizations respond to RFPs and security questionnaires quickly with AI. Get compliant in weeks, not months. Thousands of companies like AngelList, Fabric, Doodle, Dooly, Lob, Slab, and Stream trust Secureframe for automated security and privacy compliance.

Click here to chat with their team. Mention “Sar” during your demo to get 20% off your first year of Secureframe. Promotion available through December 31st, 2022.

I don’t typically publish on Mondays but today’s an exception.

I follow the media landscape pretty closely. I was an early subscriber to upstarts like Puck News and indie Substack outlets like Platformer and Newcomer. The newest and much-talked-about global news outlet is Semafor, cofounded by ex-Bloomberg Media CEO Justin Smith and ex-NYT media columnist and ex-editor-in-chief of Buzzfeed News Ben Smith.

I reached out to Ben to talk about how he thinks about Semafor more from a cofounder’s standpoint and less as a journalist.

Sar: Launching a new startup is always a special moment! What have been the highs as you reflect on the first two weeks? 

Ben: Well, I’m finally clearheaded enough to reflect a little, which is, in part, a tribute to how strong our tiny tech, product, and design teams are. I’ve been around a lot of news startups and have really come to appreciate both ambitious design and technical stability, and it’s been a joy to benefit from both.

I’m so pleased about two things: We’re doing stories and videos every day that cut through, from our reporting on SpaceX to the news that a US Senator is under investigation to the haunting series of AI-driven Witness videos we’ve launched. And then, at least as important, that people who come to our products because of breaking news are really liking the products themselves, whether our morning Flagship and Principals newsletters or the “Semaform” format that breaks up facts and analysis.

Sar: Have any unexpected learnings from the first week made you reconsider strongly held ideas?

Ben: We had a theory that people would appreciate it if we bolded the first sentence of every paragraph. We learned quickly that, in fact, they did not. But so far, most of our thesis about both journalism and distribution feel like they’re bearing out.

Sar: I saw a lot of incremental chatter and reporting on Semafor pre-launch. How did it feel others pull the media column treatment on you? 

Ben: It was fun, for a couple of years, to just be on the outside peering into others’ glass houses, and now that I’m back inside a glass house.

Sar: What do you believe is most misunderstood about Semafor?

Ben: When people hear “global,” they often think we’re keyed to self-identified Globalists and business class travellers. Of course, we hope those folks will read us. But if you look either at our US or Africa coverage, you’ll see that we’re aiming at the much larger groups of people around the world who love and care about the news and are interested in seeing it done in a transparent, compelling way. But you’ll also see we don’t imagine there’s a single audience — that a teacher, lawyer, or other readers in Lagos isn’t, mostly, going to read about all the same things as someone in the same line of work in New York.

Sar: Do you want the website to become a destination readers come to like The Verge is now trying to do? Or is that just a compliment to the distributed strategy of being in readers’ inboxes’ like Axios or Puck? 

Ben: We certainly see ourselves as multiplatform, and newsletters are a great way to distribute news and reach people who connect with your work directly. But we’ve invested a lot in the web, and I actually think our mobile homepage is particularly lovely!

Sar: What have you learned about hiring the right designers and engineers for a news outlet?

Ben: Well, Mark Wilkie, our head engineer, is a bit of a unicorn: He played a big role in the creation of digital media in the early 2000s at Huffington Post, Gawker, and BuzzFeed, where I loved working with him, left the industry for a bit for some of the infinite number of easier and more lucrative things great engineers can do than news and missed it. He saw the piece in the Times about us and emailed me. So hire someone like that! Incredibly experienced and knowledgeable who loves news. (just please don’t hire Mark!) Similarly, our head of product, Kellen Henry, is a former journalist who came most recently from a product job at Wirecutter, has both experience and a passion for news, and really gets that, ultimately, the news is the product. I’d say the same of our great designer, Al Lucca — you need people who really care about the product and the mission because media in general, and news, in particular, is a very quirky corner of the world. 

Sar: The “One Good Text” section is my favorite part of the newsletters. Why do you think it’s resonating so well?

Ben: I think people like it because it’s so transparent. It’s a normal human interaction and a glimpse at how reporters work without the editing and framing that often is part of journalism. Also, it’s just how we all communicate in real life. 

Sar: Another novelty is the use of AI in your video storytelling. 

Ben: This form of AI, which is implemented by a talented Australian artist, is an incredibly powerful tool for visual storytelling around things that can’t be filmed — particularly, people’s narratives of their own experiences and inner lives, and it’s a way to represent that honestly and transparently without any of the issues around re-enactments. We certainly plan to do a lot more.

Sar: What word are you most known for using internally?

Ben: Semaform!

Sar: What are you most nervous about in the short term? 

Ben: I’m just totally focused on doing great journalism every day, breaking news and doing it in a distinct way. Obviously, everyone is nervous and should be about the economy and ad market, and we’re being very disciplined about spending as a result. 

Sar: Unlike many of your peers and media commentators, you seem to avoid getting ideological about business models. Why?

Ben: Thank you for asking this! I have very strong beliefs that journalism should be fair and transparent, humble, and open to input from all sources. And I don’t think it makes any sense to pair those with some kind of ideology about revenue. This is a hard enough business. I’m thrilled to have partners in Justin Smith and Rachel Oppenheim, who are the best of their generations in the news, and who see their role as building a great, sustainable company — not trying out this year’s business fad.

I have been reading Semafor’s Flagship, Tech, Media, and Business newsletters.

Ben has talked about the editorial direction of Semafor in his recent interviews on Derek Thompson’s, Peter Kafka’s, and Kara Swisher’s podcasts.

Secureframe helps organizations respond to RFPs and security questionnaires quickly with AI. Get compliant in weeks, not months. Thousands of companies like AngelList, Fabric, Doodle, Dooly, Lob, Slab, and Stream trust Secureframe for automated security and privacy compliance.

Click here to chat with their team. Mention “Sar” during your demo to get 20% off your first year of Secureframe. Promotion available through December 31st, 2022.

Last week’s chats