A few weeks ago, Semafor co-founder and editor-in-chief Ben Smith found himself ensnared in an old-school, journo-versus-journo pissing match on X—the kind of tiresome digital contretemps that was a regular hazard of the occupation during his past life as a muckraking reporter. Ben, who has mostly managed to evade this sort of digital dust-up during the executive phase of his career arc, had promoted a benign-if-unwary Semafor essay noting that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman had effectively outrun his association with the murder of Jamal Khashoggi—a largely unassailable point, at least on a geopolitical level, given his recent White House visit and Trump’s fulsome embrace. Moments later, however, The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner had a bone to pick. “You would have to be brain-dead to read this piece,” he tweeted, “and not immediately wonder who is funding Semafor Gulf.”