INSIDE
THE CULT
the GOP convention – a curious
move considering Smith had already swapped his “benpolitico”
Twitter handle for “buzzfeedben”
and was regularly linking to his
un-bylined pieces on BuzzFeed.
Then Smith stopped writing
the Politico column in March and
began using a byline on BuzzFeed,
even though Romney was not yet
the official nominee.
“We love Ben. We’re not talking about that contract,” VandeHei says. Smith declined to comment on his contract.
Politico staffers say Smith was
understandably focused on running BuzzFeed, and his weekly
columns weren’t considered as
strong as his previous work. While
Harris similarly wouldn’t discuss any specifics about Smith’s
contract, he explains “mak[ing]
a decision to modify the column
arrangement” with his former reporter after just a few months.
“I felt Ben had taken on an assignment that deserved his mindshare,” Harris says of Smith’s
BuzzFeed job. “I think he underestimated and I underestimated to
what extent a column would work
in his interests and work in ours.”
In recent months, Smith has
told journalists that he can’t yet
poach from Politico, sources say,
presumably because of a stipulation with the exit agreement. On
HUFFINGTON
06.24.12
Tuesday, Smith hired BuzzFeed’s
first Washington D.C. bureau
chief and plans to staff up more
through the year. So it remains
to be seen if any Politico staffers,
perhaps post-election, will follow
him to a site that’s emerged as
the most talked about newcomer
in this Twitter-fueled campaign
news cycle — in some respects,
the Politico of 2012.
Smith’s departure wasn’t the
only big shake-up on the politics desk this cycle, with staffers
describing a “mutiny” in recent
months that led Mahtesian in
April to focus on blogging and
writing pieces, rather than editing Politico’s top reporters.
Mahtesian and Burns have had a
frosty relationship for a long time
and in recent months there have
also been tensions between Mahtesian and Haberman. To staffers,
it appeared like Burns, the Van-