Meredith Klein of Meredith and the Media interviewed Semafor media editor Max Tani about his job.
Here is an excerpt:
As media editor, you cover a broad yet deep swath, from business to politics, ranging from major news organizations and media executives to the creators, podcasts, and personalities shaping the industry. Can you share more on your beat?
- Media is the way we understand the world. We consume it now more than ever because we’re spending hours and hours a day looking at content. When people think about the media, they used to think about just cable news, a television news broadcast, a magazine, or a newspaper. While all of those things exist and are still important, plenty of people are getting their news and information solely from sources that are none of those things. I like to think about the people and institutions who are shaping the way we think about politics, business, or entertainment.
- I like to focus on technology and use that as my driving lens. I’ve thought at various points in my career, “Should I focus on just this specific thing?” There are certain media reporters out there who focus on specific parts of the media landscape, and they will tune out other things, or just aren’t as interested. And that’s totally fair. I’m not interested in every part of the media business. It’s very broad.
- The thing I love about writing and podcasting is that it allows me to dabble in a lot of different places. We’ve done sports media stories. We’ve done a lot of technology media stories because of how AI is changing media in particular. We’ve done some Hollywood media stories. We did some really fun Hollywood media stuff at Semafor last year. We broke the news that President Donald Trump had intervened with Larry Ellison to get Rush Hour 4 made. We did a story about Will Smith’s independent media company, some of the struggles it had been going through, and what that said about this star-driven production system that emerged in Hollywood and had been starting to struggle a little bit.
Read more here.
