Really good new B.S. Report with Bill Simmons welcoming Nate Silver and Malcolm Gladwell to discuss newspapers in the age of the Internet and the Graham family selling the Washington Post to Jeff Bezos, among other topics. Some interesting moments:

• Gladwell on the New Yorker in the Digital Age: “We’re one of the winners of this revolution.” He points out something that doesn’t get said very often: Because the print version of the magazine goes online at the same time all over the world, it’s opened more of a global market. Of course, the same is true of the Times, which hasn’t benefited as much. But the New Yorker has a smaller cast of talent to support and we live more in a niche, boutique age with bigger but fewer global blockbusters. Also: The New Yorker was never given away for free on any platform for any period of its existence.

• I don’t know if I agree with Gladwell’s take (expressed in the headline) that newspapers need to have polymaths, free of specific beats, who are writing on any number of topics. In such a deadline-driven environment, that may lead to superficial knowledge and armchair journalism. (Gladwell, a proud polymath himself, has been accused of such things.) And does such a wide-ranging talent pool really exist? Could it supply hundreds of such reporters to the Times and the same amount to, say, a quartet of other national newspapers? He may be right in theory–news dissemination should resemble more closely the mash-up machinery that disseminates it–but I wonder if his idea could be applied in a practical sense.

• My take on Silver’s feeling about the New York Times after listening to this podcast: He speaks of the place respectfully, but feels it isn’t nearly bold enough in reinventing itself, which was one of the main reasons he departed for ESPN, a company with oodles of money to invest in a dynamic online presence. He also questions the business acumen of the Times: “With all the traffic the New York Times is getting right now, I feel like it should be making a much higher profit.”

Listen here.