In Traffic (Penguin Press, May), Smith, former BuzzFeed News editor-in-chief and New York Times media columnist, explores the history of online media.

How does online news media compare with its predecessors?

The present gets compared to what’s often an idealized version of what came before, the mid-to-late-20th-century television and newspaper business. They were such incredible businesses, but their business was dependent on being seen as occupying the political center. There was this kind of news that prided itself, appropriately at times, on professionalism and accuracy.

Was there a downside to that era?

Sometimes it transmitted an unchallenged governing consensus that wasn’t true. I often think that the last 20th-century American media event, even though it wasn’t quite in the 20th century, was the Iraq War. The media really swallowed false information from the American government and helped bring the country into that disastrous war. And it’s interesting to think about what would have happened if social media was around and people on the ground in Iraq could have challenged claims that American government officials were making.

As you researched this book, what took you by surprise?

I had set out to tell the story of the rise and struggle of internet media and how they changed society and politics. I came to realize that though centrist and progressive outlets had seen themselves as the pioneers of this kind of populist new internet, the main characters in many ways were really the right-wing populists who were there from the start. The founders of 4chan and Breitbart, and many of the leading figures of the new right, were hanging around what we saw as the fringes of this new media world, but it turns out they were the ones who were really at the center.

What do you think the future of news media might look like?

I think there are a couple of different things happening now. One is a lot of consolidation around a relatively small number of big players like the Times or CNN, which is, in some ways, kind of depressing. But I also think there’s a generation of new outlets finding their feet on the local level, which is crucial—it’s the substrate of most journalism. I think there’s a generation that’s native to this sort of post–social media environment that’s trying to serve consumers in a totally contemporary way that people seem to like. So I think that I’m very optimistic, actually.