Ozy Media sues Ben Smith and BuzzFeed, claim media exec stole trade secrets
NY Post
Ozy Media sued Buzzfeed, Semafor and its co-founder Ben Smith, claiming they stole trade secrets from the embattled news site after Smith helped tank its business with a devastating expose, according to court papers.
The suit filed Thursday in Brooklyn federal court claims that Smith gained insight into Ozy’s operations when he led Buzzfeed, which was “targeting” the startup for acquisition in 2019.
The suit claims Smith was a major player in an ultimately unsuccessful merger between the two websites — and then used confidential information from those talks to blow up Ozy in a series of articles for The New York Times.
The suit also alleges that Smith then replicated Ozy’s investor and revenue strategies when he created his own media company, Semafor in 2022.
“Semafor was a spitting image of the media company that Carlos Watson had formed a decade earlier: OZY,” the lawsuit alleged.
Court papers claim Smith, who decamped from Buzzfeed as editor-in-chief in 2020 to become the media columnist for the Times, engaged in a conflict of interest by retaining a stake in Buzzfeed while covering the media industry.
