Cable News is in ‘Terminal Decline’: NYT Columnist Ben Smith Discusses the Future of News Media

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In a little more than a year, New York Times media columnist Ben Smith has brought considerable buzz to his weekly column, which happens to be as rich in messy drama as it is in scoops. On Sunday nights, media nerds eagerly await the latest iteration of the Media Equation, which Smith inherited at the Times when he joined the paper from BuzzFeed News. Thankfully for those nerds, Smith has yet to miss a Sunday.

His columns track the most talked-about media organizations and figures, from the scrappy (a dispatch from Dimes Square on an irreverent newspaper called the Drunken Canal) to the powerful (a profile of the lawyer who’s really in charge at Fox). He has kept a watchful eye on the New York Times, and argued in his first iteration of the Media Equation that the newfound success of the paper could be unwelcome news for the rest of the industry.

I called up Smith on Tuesday to discuss the future of the industry: will the Times continue to see success after Trump? (A new Q1 2021 report indicates the answer is yes). What’s next for print and digital media? And is cable news is about to drive off a cliff?

With regards to cable, Smith is not optimistic. “It’s in terminal decline,” he said. “It’s in stately, slow moving, ten-year contract driven, terminal decline.”

Listen to the full episode now, and subscribe to The Interview on Apple Podcasts or Spotify.