Description

Engrossing and suspenseful The New York Times

Smith sharply chronicles the revolutionary moment Financial Times

The origin story of the posttruth age the candid inside tale of two online media rivals Nick Denton of Gawker Media and Jonah Peretti of HuffPost and BuzzFeed whose delirious pursuit of attention at scale helped release the dark forces that would overtake the internet and American society

If attention is the new oil Traffic is the story of the time between the first gusher and the perceptible impact of climate change The curtain opens in Soho in the early 2000s after the first dotcom crash but before Google Apple and Facebook exploded when it seemed that New York City rather than Silicon Valley might become techs center of gravity There Nick Dentons merry band of nihilists at his growing Gawker empire and Jonah Perettis sunnier team at HuffPost and BuzzFeed were building the foundations of viral internet media Ben Smith who would go on to earn a controversial reputation as BuzzFeed Newss editor in chief was there to see it and he chronicles it all with marvelous lucidity underscored by dark wit

Traffic explores one of the great ironies of our time The internet which was going to help the left remake the world in its image has become the motive force of right populism People like Steve Bannon and Andrew Breitbart initially seemed like minor characters in the narrative in which Nick and Jonah were the stars But today anyone might wonder if the opposite wasnt the case To understand how we got here Traffic is essential and enthralling reading