The year of the Max Tani scoop

The hardest thing to do in journalism is to break exclusive, original news. Scoops are the key currency of news reporters and the ability to beat your competitors and tell the public something they don’t know is worth its weight in gold for media organizations.?

The best breaking news reporters have the wherewithal to trade information, cultivate sources, develop a level of trust that allows those sources to feel comfortable to confide in them and permit them to draw out information. It’s time consuming, difficult work.?

One of the best exponents of the scoop in the media and creative world this year was Semafor’s Max Tani. The startup's newly promoted media editor spent 2024 publishing a diverse collection of exclusive stories, newsletter tidbits and deeply reported features, punctuated by salacious and amusing morsels of media palace intrigue on social media.?

Tani meaningfully moved the needle on some of the biggest media narratives of the year and initiated plenty of watercooler conversations that reverberated around the industry.?

There was the scoop about the turmoil at Will and Jada Pinkett Smith’s Westbrook company. The one about Patrick Soon-Shiong pulling The Los Angeles Times’ presidential endorsement. Then there was the one about the incredulous demands of the The New York Times’ tech workers guild. There was the one about Trevor Noah’s Spotify deal going south. The piece about how Apple’s podcast team prioritizes promotions. Another about how The Intercept was running out of cash. He reported on the internal war over Gaza going on inside Conde Nast and the dysfunction inside The Wall Street Journal’s Moscow bureau. And on it goes…?

One of the main vessels of Tani’s work is Semafor’s weekly Media newsletter, which hits inboxes every Sunday evening. The startup’s co-founder and Editor-in-chief Ben Smith lured Tani to the site for its launch in 2022. Smith and Tani’s bravado around breaking media news in the newsletter each week is central enough to the product that every edition the number of scoops for the week is stated prominently at the top of the newsletter.?

“We have had one or two editions where it's gotten to Saturday and I'm like, our scoop count is going to be zero,” Tani says. “There have been a few close calls… But we came up with the scoop count as a fun way to do a better job flagging our scoops. But yeah, it does make me nervous”.?

I sat with Tani this week in New York to take stock of the year. Here in his own words – lightly edited for space and clarity – he walks us through how he has navigated covering one of the most competitive beats in media — itself.??

Who: Maxwell Tani

Resume:? Media Editor, Semafor; White House Reporter, Politico; Media Reporter, The Daily Beast; Reporter, Business Insider.?

Getting a scoop or getting an exclusive is the most important thing for the job — and in helping make Semafor a real player. We've only existed for a little over 2 years, but I feel like we compete for the same stories that all the big players do, and it's mainly because we've tried to define our coverage around that kind of ethos. Also, that's what I've done throughout my career because it's what I found keeps me employed!?

Scoops are what I think about every moment of the working day and then some moments of the non-working day. The way I've approached the job is to think about my competitive edge, the thing that's going to put us ahead. And that’s to either say something nobody else is saying, whether it’s a reporting scoop or something that nobody has noticed that's just sitting there. Or also, reporting something that nobody else has said because nobody knows it. Those are the things I look for when we're going to pursue a story.

The best sort of journalism is uncomfortable. Especially because we're in the media ourselves, that’s one of the things that makes it unique. Covering strictly politics or maybe finance, every person ends up getting really deeply in it and their life ends up merging with the beat in some ways. But I think mine exists to an even more insane degree just because a lot of the people and the companies I write about are people who have been my employers before or my colleagues in the past. In some cases, I'm writing about people who are personal friends. Or it might be someone who could employ me in the future. It’s an uncomfortable process.?

Really, you must understand what your values are from journalism and the news breaking perspective and then figure out where those lines are. Sometimes that means just telling people straight, ‘this is going to be a tough story, and I know we have this relationship and I'm sorry, but I have to do this because I believe it's newsworthy.’ Or sometimes, if there are stories that I'm personally too close to, we'll find someone else who can report it or publish a disclosure. The job requires humility and empathy, but also an understanding of what we're doing here… And that is, delivering people information that either helps them understand the world better in some sort of way — whether it's what's going on in business, culture or politics. That can mean angry phone calls or emails, but if you think hard before you publish about why you're publishing, most of the time you can put up with whatever that might be.

Oliver Darcy’s scoop on the Olivia Nuzzi affair with RFK Jr. was, to his credit, another career-defining scoop for him. Oliver was my boss years ago at Business Insider and my editor for a year. He really encouraged me to pursue writing about the media. So I applaud his success even when he infuriates me by beating me to a story. I’d rather be beaten by him than some of my other competitors! With these stories, there are certainly times where there is a tidbit that is intriguing but also personal. I haven't published some things because I've determined that what two people are doing in their private life has no impact on what's going on related to their business. But with the (Nuzzi) story in particular, while uncomfortable because it was confusing and weird with a lot of strange elements to try and understand about it, it was more straightforward than other scandals of that nature. Being a journalist, if you are covering someone at that high of a level, and you cross over into a relationship that goes beyond work, there's news value to that.

For about 80% of what we do, it's for an audience of a few hundred thousand people who are interested in the (inside baseball) media worldwide. They are very into everything that's going on and care about what happens behind the news, inside platforms and the ways in which we get and understand our information. So, to break news about stories that will jump the rail and break broadly into culture in some way is the goal.?

Ben Smith was one of the first people I met with when I first began media reporting. He was the editor-in-chief of BuzzFeed back then. I was asking him for advice on how to cover the media smartly. Ben has always been obsessed with this idea that great media reporting should be tied to something else, and I've internalized that — I think it's totally true. The LA Times story is the best example. We were the first ones to write about Patrick Soon-Shiong not doing endorsements for the election and that was a big story, but the people who mostly cared about it initially were those in the media or the diehards. But as the story grew, it became about Jeff Bezos and it really jumped the rail.

Ben and I work incredibly closely together. We chat everyday constantly about what's going on in the media, and it's an incredible privilege. I think only occasionally do we annoy the shit out of each other, me probably when I'm late filing things and Ben when he's, you know, driving me to get more stuff or dig harder at stories. But Ben is Ben. We work collaboratively on the newsletter. I probably do a little bit more than he does on it at this point, he'd be fine with me saying that. He's running a media company, and this is the main thing I do all week. We’re also now doing a podcast… The two of us have different ways of looking at stories and different dispositions that are really complimentary. Ultimately, it's great to have a boss who shares your editorial sensibilities. Maybe only 1 or 2 times he’s been like, ‘this is boring’.?

Having started at Semafor on day one, I have seen how a modern media business runs and that allows me to better understand what other people are doing at other media companies. I think it gives me a leg up in certain ways and I think that other media reporters who are close to the business of their publications really understand that, and you can see it in their work.

Do the media reporter rivalries go beyond friendliness? Sometimes. I tend to err more on the side of thinking, these are people I see all the time, so I try to be respectful, I think. If I'm going to be a dick to this person in print, I'm going to have to see them around and to stand behind that, it seems like a lot of effort to be petty. There's nothing you can really do about the undeniable fact that we're oftentimes chasing and competing for the same stories. So, there’s a level of healthy competition and also, it's true we all see things differently even if we're reporting on the same story.?

You'll see a little bit of shade thrown in various media newsletters. That's definitely more common now. And that’s because, again, there's more competition. When I was at The Daily Beast, there was one media newsletter: CNN’s Reliable Sources. Sara Fischer started her newsletter maybe 6 or 7 years ago and she was really the second — and she did her own kind of thing. It was more ad business focused. Now, Dylan Byers has his newsletter, publishing twice a week. Brian Stelter is back at Reliable Sources. Oliver Darcy is publishing 5 times a week. Dylan and I have kind of gone back and forth at each other on a few occasions. Oliver has gone back and forth with Dylan a few times. I don't think it's really ever reached a level beyond some friendly rivalry, but I do enjoy it. It pushes me to be better for sure. The competition is fun.

One of the pieces I had fun writing this year was about The New Yorker magazine’s editing succession race. The genesis of it was getting drinks with a source and asking, ‘hey, have you noticed this? Do you know what is going to happen here?’ And I didn't know the answer to that question when I started. It was a great inspiration to go and look into it myself. One of the best parts of being a journalist is I can literally go and find out the information. For that story, there was a lot of reader interest, interest from people involved and from people on the periphery.?

Writing about Taylor Lorenz’s podcast deal was an uncomfortable situation for me. Taylor is someone I've worked with and known socially for years and have at times been a big fan of her work. I thought she was early in covering a story that came to define the decade in media. She's a really good, talented journalist but difficult to cover as a subject because of the ability to rely and trust things she's saying and also the kind of personal attacks on people trying to write fair articles about influential people in the business. I know she was upset about a story that we did recently, but I'm not afraid to talk about it.

Some people (on this beat) never let a story go and chronicle it kind of endlessly. The media is big and broad and diverse, and we don't want to get stuck just covering the same three or four companies because that's not how people understand media these days. So, I try to do the stories that are big and important and play away from the ball a bit because we're smaller and also Ben and I have very broad interests when it comes to media.?

The Washington Post was a big story this year. I do think strategically they don’t exactly know where they are going next. I don't think they really know what their type of business is going to be going forward, and that shows in some of the editorial. They've got great journalists, but then they've got other parts of the company that only a small handful of people are kind of engaging with. I hope that's something they figure out soon because it's an important institution and still a great paper and employs a lot of great people. It needs to survive.

One of the things that's great about the job is that the work is incredibly interesting and rewarding. I don't find it to be as burdensome and taxing as it can be when you're writing stuff and you're reporting on stories you’re not interested in. It's nice to invest in something I care about. There is a point either at the beginning or the end of the day where I'm just like, ‘what if I miss something right now?’ That's just how it is. But I realize I need to not go insane and not drive all my loved ones kind of crazy with my antics. That comes up with my girlfriend and she will ask, ‘Is this work or fun?’ Sometimes, I don't really know. It's like partially fun and it's partially work. Like, if I'm having dinner with a source. It's work, yes, but it's also rewarding because I get to talk to the most interesting people I can imagine.?

The other question that my girlfriend asks is how we balance this type of work lifestyle. The way I look at it, I need to keep my foot on the gas as my competitors are doing better than ever. I want to do the best I can at the job as we continue to build this company. I feel the need to continually work hard to make sure that we keep up and get ahead but sometimes that comes at the expense of my personal life. That being said, there are things I really lean on. I exercise a tremendous amount because it makes me feel good and helps to blow off steam and wind down. I try to take time in the down periods of the year for the media I operate in. The media (beat) in general checks out that last week of August. Same for the next two weeks. I'm going to be checking out and will go on vacation and try not to look at my phone.